


asking to be born

by longtime_lurker



Series: mpreg verse [1]
Category: Bandom, Fall Out Boy
Genre: M/M, Mpreg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-18
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2018-01-01 21:43:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longtime_lurker/pseuds/longtime_lurker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Pete Wentz gets knocked up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	asking to be born

**Author's Note:**

> warning for pseudoscience like whoa, pregnant!sex, melodrama, cheesiness and general absurdity. title from Leonard Cohen, end bit from Nicole Blackman. originally posted to LiveJournal in January 2008.

**PROLOGUE: spark**

"Oh, fuck." Pete throws his head back, panting, fingers scrabbling at Patrick's sweat-slick back. "Fuckfuckfuck, Patrick, _Patrick."_

"You." Patrick's gorgeous voice breaks on the syllable and he tries again. "You okay?"

"More -" Pete arches up and they both groan, harmony almost. "More than okay, _fuck,_ 'Trick, why didn't we try this sooner?"

"Because you were still trying to hang on to your god damn 'gay above the waist' bit, you stupid ass," says Patrick, and his grin has an edge to it as he twists his hips a little viciously. The resulting sensation against Pete's prostate literally makes tears gather at the corner of his eyes, almost too intense to handle. But Pete, he's always been one to chase the far-out edges of experience, has always craved something to make him feel alive. 

Oh, god, he's never felt more alive than right now.

-

It's been almost six months since the beginning of this...thing, whatever it is, between them. Six months since Patrick parted ways with his latest ladyfriend, six months since he told Pete about it in the middle of an epic Halo battle, six months since he dropped in casually during a loading screen, "Yeah, actually I think I might try guys for awhile."

Eyes on the TV, he hadn't seen Pete's entire body go suddenly still, but there was no way he could have missed the strain behind the words when Pete said quietly, "I...never thought you swung that way."

"Heteroflexible, I guess you could call it." Patrick had shrugged, priming his thumbs over the triggers. "It's, y'know. Mostly theoretical as of right now. But I figure this is the time of life to experiment, right?"

"Yeah, absolutely," said Pete, voice near to cracking, and onscreen Patrick's character swiveled around, took aim, and shot him down.

-

Pete's not registering much through his sex haze except pleasure, desperation, and a good deal of surprise. He'd wanted this, sure, and he'd known he wanted it, but he'd had no idea that he would love it so much: Patrick stripping him down, spreading him open, shoving his way gentleroughly inside. Never before has he experienced or even imagined himself being so vulnerable, the _good_ kind of vulnerable. Pete already knew that he was a little into pain, more than a little into submission; but more than anything, the raw intimacy of penetration (white-hot friction as Patrick thrusts into him) has Pete turned on so strongly he can barely _see._ Gay above the waist indeed.

"Just another poor life decision on my part -" he agrees with a rueful nod, then trails off into a gasp. "Patrick, please, please," and he doesn't even know what he's begging for. 

But because it's Patrick (Patrick, who can finish Pete's sentences, read his face like a sheet of music; Patrick, who knows Pete's every twitch and quirk and gesture and secret and arsenal of stupid jokes), he knows what Pete needs better than Pete knows himself. Just like always: and when he wraps his pretty white hand tight around Pete, it's _exactly_ what was missing, exactly right. Pete is just congratulating himself on picking a best friend/fuckbuddy/whatever-the-hell-they-are-now with whom he's totally telepathic, when Patrick bites just below Pete's ear, jerks his hand on Pete's dick, and thrusts hard inside him all at the same time. It's a strange, new experience: the feeling of a hand jerking him off is very familiar, the feeling of his body clenching uncontrollably around a hard cock is...very not, and the feeling of Patrick's _mouthteethtongue_ on his skin is both at once - not new, exactly, but never like this before. 

Of course, he's got about a nanosecond to note all of this before sensation slams into him from three directions at once; it all meets at the core of his body in an incandescent crash, and Pete thinks he might actually be breaking, breaking apart and he never wants it to end.

-

Two weeks later he'd gone down on Patrick after hours in a darkened dressing room in the Clandestine store. 

He just knew those adjoining doors would come in handy someday.

"Bad idea, this is _such_ a bad idea in so, so many ways," Patrick had moaned while Pete slid to his knees and fumbled with the zipper, and then, "Nonono, asshole, don't _stop."_ And he snickered in the most insensitive way when Pete half-choked, half-spat a mouthful of come onto the floor, wet-lipped and coughing because he was kind of new to this whole actual-sex-with-guys thing, okay.

Pete glared daggers at Patrick as he got to his feet. "Hey, shut the hell up, I've never _done_ this before." Because it was Patrick, he didn't even need to say the other part of the thought out loud: _But I'll do that and more for you._ And honestly, there was also the fact that the sound of Patrick whimpering and struggling to stay quiet above him - the feel of Patrick's cock filling his mouth and pushing against the soft flesh at the back of his throat whenever Patrick's hips bucked off the wall - had comprised what was possibly the hottest experience of his life to date. Unrefined technique notwithstanding.

Patrick's mocking grin remained firmly in place as he reached down and palmed Pete's heavy, swollen cock through his jeans, and Pete shut up fast, trembling with pleasure and watching their shadowy reflections in the wall mirror with wide eyes while Patrick stroked him off.

"Dude, I thought you said you didn't like dick," Patrick had said, after. "Like a million billion times."

"I like _you,"_ said Pete, and that was that.

-

Pete closes his eyes. Has to. Not that he wants to stop staring at Patrick's lower lip (red, and bitten, and Patrick sucks it into his mouth on every other thrust), but he's overwhelmed, overcome. He can't do a damn thing right now except focus on pure sensation, the scorching slide of Patrick's cock deep, deep, deep in. 

God, but he's close, and when Patrick hears his breath catch in _that_ way, he squeezes the base of Pete's dick abrupt and hard, and Pete groans in frustrated arousal. "No you don't, not yet," Patrick whispers, and what is Pete going to do but obey?

-

Pete refined his technique fairly fast, seeing as over the next few months they'd done...well, not _everything,_ but a lot: hands, fingers, mouths, tongues, learning each other like it was ninth grade all over again. Oh, and also sinking his cock into Patrick's ass as Patrick writhed beneath him amid the pillows. Which for the record was Pete's new favorite place to be in the entire world, _jesus,_ and it turned out that Patrick approved of it too. _Really_ approved of it, judging from the overall orgasm count. (Pete had learned very soon that Patrick a. happened to like getting fucked and b. was a total power bottom. The former fact surprised him a little, the latter not so much.) 

But tonight was new, tonight was kind of a milestone: the very first night that he'd let Patrick fuck him. 

He'd been clinging desperately to that last shred of heterosexual credentials, or whatever, for really no good reason at all. Habit? Fear? The changes it symbolized: the big step of reconceptualizing himself as someone who liked this, wanted this? Or the even bigger step of - Pete's mind tried to avoid the phrase "going all the way," because he wasn't _actually_ in ninth grade, but it was something along those lines. Something about the trust involved, something about the intimacy, something about the admission that this wasn't just a couple of bi-curious best friends casually messing around anymore. 

Not that it ever had been just messing around, not for Pete anyway. Pete can't honestly say that his feelings for Patrick could ever, ever have been described as "casual," even before - even back when he'd still been pretending to himself that said feelings were totally platonic, really. But there's a difference between knowing that in his own mind and _showing_ Patrick: making it utterly clear to him that Pete wants him, wants to lay himself open for him, wants anything that will get him as close to Patrick as he possibly can.

So it'd taken awhile. This evening, though. They'd been fooling around in Pete's hotel room, down to skin on skin, when Patrick had touched one finger to the nape of Pete's neck. Had slid that finger down Pete's spine, agonizingly slow; had trailed it further and further, lower than he'd ever tried before. Had pressed inward just a little, sending this shock through Pete's nerve endings that was...really not at all unpleasant. Had asked Pete, almost shyly, if they could maybe try it the other way for once. Just an experiment.

-

God, it's good, it's so _fucking_ good, and Pete's whimpering mindlessly, over and over _fuck me take me do me hurt me fuck me,_ can't control it now. Patrick's eyes widen right before he hisses, "Pete - I'm gonna - _Pete,"_ and comes in hot thick pulses, messily, inside. In the throes of orgasm, his fingers clench tight around Pete's cock; he looks at Pete, cheeks blazing, eyes blazing, and shudderbreathes out, "C'mon, c'mon baby -" 

\- this is the only time, Pete has discovered, that Patrick will use these endearments, _needs_ to use them, almost - when he's out of his mind at the very height of climax, it's _sugar,_ it's _baby,_ it's _pet_ (that one Pete found both a little disturbing and a lot hot) - and though they haven't yet said "I love you," not in _that_ way anyway, when Patrick's really going crazy sometimes it's _love -_

"- now, _come on,"_ and Pete loses it instantly.

-

Pete had taken a deep mental breath and, hoping that he wouldn't regret this, had said, "I thought you'd never ask." And then, "Hell yes." 

Which is about when Patrick had held him down and fucked him _raw._

And if Pete has anything to say about it, it's going to be happening again. And again. And again and again and again -

Almost six months now; and they are, and simultaneously aren't, the same Pete-and-Patrick that they've always been. Six months, and Pete's still tiptoeing with bated breath around this _thing,_ this tenuous understanding of theirs, unable to believe that he hasn't fucked it up yet, unable to believe that it's maybe - actually - working. That Patrick is his, his in every possible way now, in the _last_ possible way. Better: that Patrick is happy with it. Happy with _him._

-

Patrick makes a soft little noise in his throat and kicks at the blankets a little, a welcome interruption of Pete's late-night reflections. He almost never falls asleep this early (well, early for an insomniac; it's maybe quarter of twelve?), but tonight he thinks he could, thinks he could lay his head down and let the cadence of Patrick's breathing lull him to sleep. Sleep, yeah... 

Pete smoothes the pad of his thumb over Patrick's lower lip, and Patrick sighs. In sleep he curls instinctively closer to the warmth of Pete's body, and Pete's whole heart seizes up.

The clock clicks over to midnight. A falling star, a particularly bright one, paints a shimmering arc on the dark sky outside the hotel window. Pete stares up at it and wishes, wishes hard - wild, crazy, ridiculous wishes that flare star-bright in his mind's eye as he hovers on the edge of sleep. Wishes for _Patrick_ , for love, for promises of forever, the whole enchilada.

He's drifting off now, all defenses down, leaving a trail of wishes behind him: house, dogs, white picket fence, names on the mailbox together, _children._

 

**MAY: t minus 9 months**

When the vomiting starts, a few weeks later, nobody thinks anything of it at first - least of all Patrick. Pete tends to throw up on an awfully regular basis anyway (before and after shows, or on the wrong mix of meds, or having eaten something disgusting on a dare from Dirty), so it's nothing particularly out of the ordinary when Patrick wakes up one sunshiny Monday morning to an empty bed and horrible sounds from the bathroom; nothing unusual when he pushes the door cautiously open to find Pete on his knees, retching.

But when Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday dawn upon the same unpleasant scene, Patrick starts to worry a little, and he's just about to voice his concerns on Saturday morning when Pete looks up at him between heaves, face greenish, t-shirt soaked with cold sweat, and croaks, "'Trick? I think there might be something wrong with me."

-

"Don't worry, it's probably just his big gay freakout," Andy yells cheerfully and unhelpfully into Patrick's ear as they're hustling Pete over to the nearest private clinic. Patrick barely even bothers to spare a scowl in his general direction. Whatever, Andy's just mad because they conveniently forgot to tell him that _yeah, by the way, we're sleeping together_ and he had to find out the hard way four months in. Yes, Patrick realizes that it must be kind of traumatic to walk in on your lead singer murmuring, "Give it to me, honey, harder, _harder"_ as your bassist fucks him against the wall of the restaurant bathroom, and all, but _geez._ Talk about holding a _grudge._

The physician they see is named Dr. Bacal, comes recommended by one of their security guys, and has a wall full of diplomas and a venerable sort of face. He listens and nods inscrutably as Pete ticks off symptoms on his fingers: nausea, vomiting, faintness, exhaustion, random nosebleeds. Most of which Patrick hadn't known a damn thing about. It's _so_ like Pete to _not say anything,_ like an idiot, until he'd puked up half his stomach lining.

The others explain that _yeah, Doctor, we'd really like to get this cleared up as soon as possible; we're in a band, see, and we're just starting a tour right now, the Endless Summer Tour 2009 with Fall Out Boy and Panic At The Disco, maybe you've heard of us?_ (Dr. Bacal hasn't); _anyway, we have shows to play and stuff, so if you could just maybe give him something, whatever he needs, and then we'll just be on our way -_

Dr. Bacal glances over the results of the preliminary tests, then looks up with a sober face. "Mr. Wentz," he says, "it may be more serious than that." 

-

They put Pete through a battery of tests, tests, and more tests: bloodwork, complete physical, cranial x-rays, CAT scan, in-detail evaluation of family medical history, MRI. With every new measure, Patrick is forced to upgrade the situation's severity in his mind, a progression like the Homeland Security system. From the safe, green zone of _fuck, Pete, why'd you let the stomach flu get this far, you fucker_ to the blue of _okay, so this could be a minor inconvenience_ ; yellow, _or maybe even a significant problem_ ; orange, _no, *definitely* a significant problem_ ; up to the silent all-out red alert of _fuck, Pete, please be okay, you better be okay, you fucker..._

He tries to continue right on with tour stuff like nothing's wrong, just business as usual, but he's on edge. They all are, just waiting for the other shoe to drop; the stage show is off, mediocre, and their free time mostly consists of a lot of silence interrupted only by bouts of meaningless bickering over nothing (or alternatively, if you're Pete, bouts of bending over the toilet yet again as breakfast refuses to stay down).

In the end it all comes down to a confidential meeting with Dr. Bacal, who's got an odd and ominous look on his face this morning. It's a bad day. Pete's silent and pale and still, Joe's biting his nails, Andy keeps shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and Patrick's trying to steel himself for the worst-case scenario, the worst possible news: brain tumor, heart problems, leukemia, HIV. There's a sour taste in his mouth and throat and belly and this guy's office is decorated in a nauseating shade of puce and Patrick thinks _he_ might start throwing up any minute now, too.

Dr. Bacal shuffles some papers around and clears his throat.

"It seems the situation is this: apparently it has been shown by our tests," and Patrick's heart sinks into his Vans, because he knows when doctors are trying to weasel-word something and that is a whole lot of passive voice right there, "that Mr. Wentz -" He breaks into a fit of coughing. "Pardon me. Well. As unlikely as it sounds, it appears that a viable human embryo has successfully implanted in Mr. Wentz's abdominal cavity." He makes eye contact with Pete, squaring his shoulders as if he thinks everyone's going to laugh at him, and says with the flat voice of a man who cannot believe what he's saying, "Congratulations, you're pregnant."

"Nice try," says Pete tiredly, "but I've already been Punk'd before, thanks."

In answer the doctor just holds up a dark and smudgy sheet. Someone's written "5 WEEKS" along the bottom. It takes them all a minute to realize that it's an ultrasound picture, and from there about a half-second to see that there's a little black blob in the middle. It doesn't look like anything much at all. But it's there.

If Patrick's going to be honest, his first thought is something along the lines of, _Just when you started to think that sleeping with Pete Wentz wasn't such a bad idea after all._

-

All of his perceptions kind of gray out for the next little while, and Patrick only catches fragments of what the doctor is saying: "biological aberration...chromosome splicing...unprecedented in the literature...functioning pseudo-uterus...DNA from both parents...unknown trigger...need hormone shots administered...high risk...there's theoretically enough _room,_ physically, but..." 

As far as Patrick can tell, all the medical-ese essentially boils down to a big fat WE HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE, and he'd be pretty fascinated by the scientific ramifications of the case if he weren't currently busy with such important activities as Gaping at the Carpet in a Stunned Fashion, Waving His Hands Around in the Air Like A Spastic Italian, Clinging to a Somewhat Shellshocked Pete Wentz, and the always-popular Freaking Right the Fuck Out. 

When Dr. Bacal finally trails off, there's a long, long silence.

Then Andy shrugs slowly and says, "Well. _There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy_ , I guess -"

"I cannot believe you're quoting the fucking Bible at a time like this!" Patrick yelps, tightening his arm around Pete's shoulder. Pete is huddled into his hoodie, face blank and wondering, but it's Patrick who's visibly shaking. Oh god, he really is going to throw up.

"Actually I wanna say that's Shakespeare?" Joe is cheerfully uncowed by the medically impossible. 

"It is!" Andy high-fives him, then glances back over at Pete and Patrick. "Calm down, man. I mean. Obviously you're getting rid of it, right? You're a _guy,_ I think this thing basically counts as an unnatural tumor or something..."

"The embryo is only at five weeks or thereabouts," Dr. Bacal informs Pete, "just a tiny clump of cells still, maybe a quarter-inch long. We could easily induce miscarriage with abortifacients - mifepristone and prostaglandin, no invasive surgery necessary - and it would hardly affect you at all. By next week all your systems could be back to normal."

But Pete's staring at a poster on the wall, big block letters and color pictures: **FETAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT.** Then he looks at Patrick, back at the poster, back to Patrick's face again. Patrick can almost _feel_ the weight of Pete's gaze, heavy on his skin. He's endured years and years of adoring stares from Pete Wentz, but this one's a little different, and it's making him nervous.

"Right now its face is beginning to form," he says slowly.

The doctor says, "...well. Yes. Yes it is."

Patrick stares, increasingly horrified, at Pete staring at the poster. "For fuck's sake, Pete, you vote pro-choice."

"Yeah," says Pete, "emphasis on the _choice,"_ and oh, no. Patrick knows that particular tone.

"You can't seriously be thinking - fuck. Can we just get this over with already?" He feels flushed, dazed; his skin doesn't fit right, and his stomach's swooping with vertigo like he's standing on the brink of a cliff. "I think the decision's pretty obvious, here. Clearly we can't be going ahead and having a fucking _baby."_

Pete blinks at him, then turns back to **FETAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT.**

"Baby," he echoes softly.

Patrick drops his head into his hands.

-

When it comes to the two of them, Pete-and-Patrick, Patrick's not used to being the one who's going completely to pieces. He's going to pieces now. Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III, in his infinite wisdom, is refusing point-blank to get rid of...it. 

(Patrick does not think _embryo,_ does not think _fetus,_ most definitely does not think _baby.)_

And it's never been any use arguing with Pete Wentz, not when his mind's made up.

"What if I decide I'm not just gonna take a pill and forget this ever happened? What if I don't want it to go like that? I mean, shit, we could have a _baby,_ god only knows how that one works, and - look, Patrick, it's just. It's _yours._ That's enough for me to want it already, right there." Pete's eyes are enormous and dark and liquid as he looks at Patrick out of his hood.

"How do I know that you don't just want something adorable to pet and dress up and snuggle when you're sad, just like your, your damn _dog_ or something?" Patrick says tightly. "What if you have no idea of the responsibilities involved? What kind of life are we gonna be able to give this kid? What if we suck at parenting, what if we fuck up this kid even worse than either of us are fucked up?" His voice is rising, and he tries desperately to keep a lid on his temper. "How do you think you're gonna pull this one off, Pete? Jesus, you're barely even qualified to take care of _yourself."_

Pete winces slightly at that last shot, but he's still got _that_ look on his face, resolute as his tone. "Look, I've thought about all of that. I'm not stupid. But I still want it." He touches his stomach, for the moment as flat and hard as ever; touches Patrick's wrist with his fingertips. "Please, 'Trick," he says quietly. "I can't do this thing without you."

Way down in his heart, Patrick knows that if he asked Pete to take the damn abortion pill - really truly seriously asked it of him - Pete would do it. Would do it for him. But he also saw the look in Pete's eyes as his lips moved around the word "baby."

He remembers the eyes of a much younger Pete - lovely, manic eyes, alight with possibility. _Patrick, man, I really think this band could go somewhere. You and me, we're gonna rule the world._

Patrick says, "Mother _fucker,"_ in a strangled voice; but he lets Pete take his hand.

 

**JUNE: t minus 8 months**

The news that Endless Summer might have to be cancelled causes more than a little consternation in the Panic camp, especially when it's explained that the reason is Pete and Patrick's Very Unplanned Pregnancy. Pete is already kind of frayed around the edges, and the meeting is not the most professional one he's ever conducted, especially when Spencer Smith quite reasonably questions the wisdom of soldiering on with a highly dangerous, totally unprecedented, and possibly fatal medical condition: "just, when somebody has as much at stake as you do, Pete..."

"I am exercising," Pete informs them with a slightly hysterical edge, _"my right to choose as a woman!"_

"You're not a woman," Ryan points out.

Pete stabs an index finger at Ryan's chest. "You. Hush."

 _"And_ you're being unreasonable," says Ryan, but subsides with an eyeroll when Pete jabs him harder.

"Shut the fuck up, all of you," he announces. "It's my decision if it's anyone's, and I've made it now. I'm keeping my baby."

Brendon absently starts humming "Papa Don't Preach" and looks surprised and hurt at Pete's death glare. (It takes an elbow in the side, courtesy of Spencer, for him to realize what he's doing and hastily break off.)

-

It's painfully obvious to Pete that Patrick still has some big damn reservations about all this. _Serious_ reservations, and oh, does he hope that Patrick's assent was real, that Patrick will keep his promise to stay; the idea of something they created together going and driving a wedge between them instead, that's too ugly for Pete to allow himself to contemplate. 

"But I was scared that if I got rid of it on his say-so, I'd resent him forever for it," he says miserably to Joe. "And the idea of me being bitter at _Patrick,_ fuck, remembering that he made that decision and _hating_ him for it...I'm pretty sure I can't think of anything else that would be worse, more _wrong."_

"You not worshipping Patrick would be like the earth not moving around the sun," Joe agrees.

"'xactly. This whole mess'll be hard, I know it will, but in the long run it'll be better this way. I think. Right?"

Joe rubs his shoulders, says, "You did what you had to, man."

"I just -" Pete sighs, looking down at his lap and rubbing his nose. "I really want this baby, Joe."

At any rate, they're too busy taking the plunge of parenthood to thrash out the situation with each other right now; suddenly there is so, so much to do. That week, for instance, they have to make the fateful phonecalls to their respective families and tell them shiftily that "we seem to have acquired a kid. Um. No, not like an orphan left at the bus door, Mom, what on earth? Do people even _do_ that anymore? - Whatever, anyway, no. That's not it. We've got a kid, um, in progress."

"Oh, Pete," says his mom in a long-suffering tone. (She uses that phrase more often than any other, far and away.)

\- "...Just tell me you didn't do anything illegal, please," says Patrick's dad. "I understand that infant kidnapping is frowned upon in all fifty states."

"I know, I know," says Pete guiltily. "Do you maybe have any old baby stuff that you could send over to Patrick's Chicago house by, say, February or so?"

\- "Uh, no," says Patrick, "it was all totally above-board, Dad, really."

"Oh yeah, there's a whole bunch of things in the basement," says Pete's mom enthusiastically. "And I know Patrick's mom will be happy to contribute too. Let's see, where'd that playpen go?"

\- "So does that mean I'm gonna be a grandpa?" says Patrick's dad. _"Sweet,"_ and Patrick cracks a tiny smile.

-

In the end the tour continues, as per Pete's express wishes. But plenty of things have to change anyway, and not all of the changes are easy. On the orders of Dr. Bacal, every pregnancy book he can lay his hands on, and his own rapidly-strengthening sense of parental worry, Pete lays off alcohol, caffeine, and prescription drugs immediately. The first two don't pose much of a problem: it's annoying when he can't grab a Red Bull to wake up or have a beer with the Panic kids at night, but nothing more than an inconvenience. Cold-turkey withdrawal from all the Ambien and Ativan and Zoloft and Seroquel, however, is quite another matter. And when _those_ effects are compounded by the wild hormone rush of pregnancy - well, it's not the craziest Pete's ever been, but it's not the sanest either. 

As a final pleasant touch, he still finds himself gagging and spitting bile into the toilet at 8 o'clock every morning, regular as clockwork. And the weird cravings are setting in, too, which isn't great. They can only chalk so much up to diva tendencies or whatever; eventually someone's going to start talking about how Fall Out Boy are going through a box of Grape-Nuts a day and just started demanding sauerkraut in their dressing room, and that can't end well.

"Yo, Andy, do you happen to know any, like. Special elixirs for this or something?" Pete asks plaintively one morning, just after he's hit the new and amazing low of candied herring (specially imported from Iceland!) for breakfast.

"I'm a vegan, not a witch doctor, you know," Andy grumbles; but the next day there's a bottle in the bus fridge labeled PETE'S PREGNANCY POTION and full of thick liquid, dubious in color and even more so in taste. Everyone (Andy included, probably) is amazed to discover that, placebo effect or not, it kind of works. 

There are some things, though, that even PETE'S PREGNANCY POTION can't remedy.

Pete hasn't been wholly unmedicated for _years,_ and going cold turkey has him in a hell of an unstable headspace. It's ironic, but he feels almost _lost_ without his self-destructive tendencies, lost now that he no longer has the ability to harm his body, harm his mind, harm himself with sleeplessness and overwork and undereating and pills - at least, not for the duration of nine months (and god, he hopes that he won't be going back to that mode after the birth, because that's not the way to be a good dad). The big black sadness is coming down on him again, full weight, and he doesn't know any other ways to deal with it.

Woven all through that adrift feeling is also a tiny, stubborn thread of gratefulness to baby (not "the baby", not in Pete's head, just "baby." Or sometimes "babybabybaby".) He knows he'll never be the same, not after this, and maybe that's a good thing. Or, hell, maybe he'll find that he can't survive without constantly chipping away at himself in a hundred little ways -

 _Oh, god,_ Pete thinks as he lies in his bunk with the bus doors locked and his Sidekick turned off, curled up in fetal position himself, _what if baby is as crazy as me?_

The nights are no better. He tosses and turns, plagued by fragments of awful dreams, dreams he can't think about or talk about to anyone, not even to Patrick - because they're nightmares about baby. Pete dreams of baby being hurt, baby hating him, baby ending up just like him, baby disappearing. 

The worst might be the night he dreams that he's building a sandcastle with baby by the seashore. In the dream, the beach is flat gray and stretches on forever, and so is the sky; the baby's bright-colored swimsuit is the only spot of color. Baby is just big enough to crawl around in the grayish sand, but it's wearing a floppy sunhat and he can't see its face. Dream-Pete turns around to find - something, he doesn't even know, it's one of those inexplicable dream things: his sandals? towel? jacket? - and when he turns back, just a split-second later, the cold surf has snatched the baby away and the waves have dragged it far out into the black, black water. 

Pete wakes up from that one with both hands gripping his stomach and a scream caught in his throat.

But when he reads about how his child's brain and spinal cord are already formed, when he drags himself out of bed and goes in for his weekly follow-up visit and Dr. Bacal tells him that it has its own unique fingerprints already, Pete knows he made the decision he wanted to make. He asks the doctor about some natural calming techniques, breathing exercises and stuff, and tries to keep clinging to the knowledge that the commotion in his head will pass eventually.

In the meantime he just grits his teeth and wakes up in the morning and plays shows in the evening and tries his very, very best to hold together, for the sake of the small life inside him. And at night when he's in his bunk again (hot confined space and dry sore eyes, _cantsleepcanteatcantworkcantplaycanttalkcantmakemyheadshutupcantfuckingsleep)_ Patrick comes to him and holds him in his arms, wordless. It doesn't "fix" him or solve all his problems, but - it's sufficient for this moment, for the here and now, and Pete is grateful for that much. He'll take that.

Pete's never been sure if he'll have Patrick forever: he's too good at driving people away, and Patrick's just too good for him, period. But this baby, he thinks, this baby will be a piece of Patrick that he can keep; or better, a piece of PeteandPatrick, of both of them. He doesn't tell Patrick, doesn't tell anyone (it sounds silly, cheesy, when he says it out loud), but Pete's been thinking about baby kind of like it's one of their songs. Something that he and Patrick created together, something living and breathing and alive on its own terms, something of them - the two of them, together - that could last long after they're gone. What he told Patrick in the doctor's office was true: most of the reason he's doing this, the reason why that poster caught his eye, why the idea of _babybabybaby_ stirred his imagination, is because it's _Patrick's._

Something Patrick gave him, a gift like so many others: his band, music for his words, friendship that kept him sane, love, _life._

Something Patrick made: and everything Patrick makes is fucking golden.

Pete smiles a little for the first time in days, and curls into the solid, soothing space of Patrick's arms like the baby is curled inside his own body, concentric circles.

 

**JULY: t minus 7 months**

The thing that's driving Patrick nuts is how god damn placidly everyone else is taking it.

"Eh," says Brendon with a shrug, "weirder things have happened on this label, right?"

"Jesus, Wentz," Ryan Ross drawls over his morning coffee. "I know you enjoy disrupting gender norms and all, but this is taking it a little far, don't you think."

"Did I ever tell you about the time that Bill and Carden switched bodies for a week?" says Jon reminiscently. "One little baby has _nothin'_ on that."

"It IS Pete, after all," Spencer points out in a tone of resignation, as if that explains everything right there. 

Patrick - oh, Patrick's still in shock, and confused, and drained from trying to hold _Pete_ together, too, when he can't even keep himself in one piece. Patrick's got a whole damn laundry list of things threatening to drive him nuts here. 

_I want to focus on music, a career, not a family, jesus, I'm still *young*._ And _I don't know if *I've* got the maturity to handle parenthood, let alone Pete "Peter Pan" Wentz._ And _I doubt I'll make a good dad_ and _I really doubt that Pete grasps the enormity of the situation; does he ever, ever know what he's getting into?_

That's not even the worst of it, not if he's going to be honest with himself. On a deeper, darker, horrible submerged back-of-the-brain level, Patrick is fucking terrified for Pete. This shit is not supposed to happen. Pete's body isn't really equipped to handle it, Dr. Bacal made that much clear; it's just another stupid risk, like Pete is _always_ taking, like all the dangerous, idiotic shit he does that's constantly backfiring on him. What if this whole mess hurts him, hurts him bad, hurts him physically if something goes wrong, hurts him emotionally if he loses the baby, what if it fucks him up even worse? 

And then of course there's the kicker, _I feel responsible for knocking Pete up in the first place._ Which makes absolutely no sense at all, but tell that to Patrick's guilt complex.

But he tries not to think of all that now; it's irrelevant, really. This is what Patrick signed on for, however _that_ happened (he blames that peculiar, enchanting Pete Wentz spell of damn fool ideas and pretty brown eyes), and now he's going to deal with it.

-

Patrick awakens to a harsh, raw sound and the violent thrash of Pete's body next to him. He squints blearily into the darkness. The first thing he can make out is the whites of Pete's eyes, wide and unseeing. Shudders are wracking Pete's body and he's half-sobbing something incoherent about lost children.

"Shit." Patrick grabs for Pete's shoulders, attempts to shake him awake. "Pete. Pete! 'S okay, it's not real, it was just a nightmare."

His eyes have adjusted enough to see Pete's wet cheeks and the half-moon marks where Pete's dug his nails deep into his own palms. 

"When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, down will come baby, cradle and all," Pete recites distractedly, voice eerie. "Who writes that as a lullaby anyway, 'Trick? Some mom with the baby blues, some dad who didn't want to be one?"

"Shhh, hey, no," Patrick says helplessly, reaching out toward the dark, crumpled shape of Pete's body. He's got a too-familiar feeling of mingled exasperation and distress surging up his temples like a headache coming on: years of post-nightmare phone calls, insomnia-born ramblings, Pete weeping like a child in the small hours of the morning. Tonight is just another skirmish in the war in Pete's head, the fight-against-self that no amount of catharsis seems to end and that Patrick does not pretend to understand. Pete may think that Patrick's all he needs, that Patrick's enough and more - god knows he tells Patrick so on a regular basis - but Patrick has never felt, will never feel, equal to helping Pete on his bleaker nights. 

It's nothing they ever talk about in the light of day, as a rule. 

Patrick smoothes his hand over the bare skin of Pete's back. Fever-hot.

"I remember reading somebody who said that the cradle rocks above an abyss," Pete whispers unevenly. His eyes focus on Patrick's face. "You think that's true, 'Trick? You think that's the kind of life we're gonna bring baby into?"

"I think life is what you make it," Patrick murmurs back, pressing a gentle pair of fingers over Pete's mouth, a gesture more symbolic than forceful: _hush, hush._ "And I think you think too much. Stop for a little while, try to go back to sleep."

Pete bows his head into Patrick's shoulder, acquiescing. Patrick can feel him relax minutely, and he tugs the blankets up around them and closes his eyes; gathers Pete closer against him, bringing him further into the citadel of his arms.

-

He doesn't broach the subject the next day, as per usual, and Pete only says tiredly over his morning decaf, "Life unmedicated sucks a world of ass, 'Trick." 

"The doctor says it should get better as your body adjusts though, yeah?"

"I guess, yeah. Can't happen too soon." Pete eats another handful of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, brightening a little. "But hey, at least the morning sickness is letting up!"

It is indeed, enough for Pete to resume walking Hemingway in the mornings. He's got the dog along with him, like last tour, and spends what Patrick thinks is way too much time (especially for a guy as busy as Pete is) every day giving him baths or filling his water bowl or tracking down his favorite kind of dog food in whatever city they're playing today or throwing a frisbee around the parking lot for him to catch. Every week Pete's regaining more of his old energy, onstage and off. This is a mixed blessing, Patrick reflects to himself, as Pete bounces around the bus with Hemmy like a couple of tiny, noisy superballs.

And by "the bus" he means the one he now shares with Pete. After Pete had announced his decision, Andy had quietly and inconspicuously taken Pete's place on Joe's bus so that Pete wouldn't have to be around pot smoke, which is of course bad for the baby.

"Are you _sure_ it's okay?" Patrick asks him yet again, knowing it's a not inconsiderable sacrifice for Andy to make. "'Cause seriously I could live with Joe if you'd rather not, I'm sure the smoke wouldn't be all _that_ bad on my voice -"

"Hey, man," says Andy in a tone of Zen calm, "edge is edge, but a baby is a baby."

Patrick can't really rebut that one, so Casa Joe&Andy and Casa Pete&Patrick it is.

...Or, as he's increasingly coming to think of it these days, Casa Pete&Patrick&babybabybaby.

-

"No."

"C'mon!"

 _"Hell_ no, I am so not fucking you. Look what happened last time!"

"Well I'm already pregnant," Pete points out. "It's not like I can get...pregnanter."

"How the fuck do you know? Like _male pregnancy_ is an everyday occurrence? _Who knows what might happen if I stick it into you again?"_

"Fine," sighs Pete, rolling away.

"It could add another head or something!"

"Go to sleep, 'Trick."

-

They play Chicago and Patrick manages to find time for a couple of meals with his folks, who unload a shit ton of hand-me-down baby stuff onto him ("I can't take all this on the road, Mom!") and unsubtly press him for the details of the baby situation.

"Wasn't Pete going to come on over too, honey? Here, have some potatoes."

"He was, yeah," says Patrick, unwrapping a muffin, "and he sends his apologies and stuff, but Hemmy got sick all of a sudden yesterday. So, y'know" - bite, handwave, eyeroll - "Pete had to drop everything to get him to the vet's, and then he spent all last night there - last thing we needed right now, can you pass the butter? - and we've got another show to play tomorrow, so." 

His mom's face relaxes into warmth. "Oh, how sweet. In that case tell him not to worry one bit, I'll send some leftovers back with you in Tupperware for him." And then she says fondly, "He'll do anything for that dumb dog, he loves it so much," and Patrick's heart goes thump, because. Wow. Yeah. And how much more so for a kid? 

The day Patrick realizes over his mom's mashed potatoes that Pete would give baby every drop of blood in his body if he had to - that's the day when it first becomes clear to him that Pete might not, in fact, be the world's worst dad. Not by a long chalk, actually.

And if _Pete Wentz_ can do it, well, Patrick's going to have to give it his best shot too.

-

It's just the final nail in the coffin when he starts finding himself snapping at Pete over things that could be detrimental in his delicate condition. "Get out of here and get some air, you know how much nicotine you could be breathing in?" "Wentz, don't you dare fucking climb that. _Down."_ "Are you taking those prenatal vitamin thingies the doctor gave you? Every day?" 

He knows it's getting bad the day that Pete comes bounding onto the bus, announcing that _baby weighs a whole ounce now! Dr. Bacal said so today!_ and Patrick twinges with pride and immediately steps up the worried badgering.

"That's the decaffeinated tea, right?" "Drink some more water, it's important, fucking July." "When was the last time you ate?" 

"I'm not enough of a grown-up to handle this," Pete groans as he goes over the chart from the dietitian, trying to calculate whether he's getting enough protein for baby's muscles to develop properly.

 _"You're_ not enough of a grown-up to handle this?" cries Patrick in exasperation. "You might be an eternal child and everything, all right, but _I'm_ barely 25 for fuck's sake. How'm I going to be a _dad?"_

But Pete's expression has gone all...melty. "You're going to be a dad," he repeats dreamily, touching a stomach just beginning to soften, and Patrick understands that he's fucked.

 

**AUGUST: t minus 6 months**

Three a.m. and the sandman forgot to visit again. Pregnancy has eased the insomnia some - if only because Pete's body is so insanely tired from doing double duty all the time - but not, apparently, tonight. After a couple hours of restless turning on a too-hot pillow, he takes his laptop out into the lounge and starts tooling around on the internet, lurking boards and updating blogs and surfing Myspace and reading gossip about people more famous than himself.

This is all completely normal. What is not normal is Patrick stomping in at half past three with a face like thunder. "The fuck are you doing up?"

Pete shuts his laptop and says defensively, "I couldn't sleep," and Patrick (who always gets cranky as hell when tired) proceeds to shout in Pete's general direction for fifteen minutes straight about irresponsibility and the necessity of proper rest for baby's health and how he's _gonna *make* you sleep, Wentz, get your ass into my bunk right now._

It's a funny thing, but the minute Patrick starts yelling at him over this shit, Pete knows that everything is going to be okay with them.

And it just seals the deal when the next day he catches Patrick poring over a baby-name book borrowed from someone's mom.

-

Endless Summer '09 does, in fact, end. Thank god, because it was almost impossible to cram in regular follow-up visits to the doctor in between practices and soundchecks and shows and publicity and everything else that needed to be done. Also Pete really can't be crowdsurfing anymore; hell, Patrick keeps freezing in terror onstage every time Pete so much as spins around up there. So somehow they manage to wrap up the last show of the tour ("let it be remembered," says Pete, "that I played a two-hour rock concert in eighty-degree weather _in the second trimester of pregnancy")_. 

Fall Out Boy promptly retires to Chicago, where Patrick's Glenview house is designated as home base. Or, if you prefer, **BABY CENTRAL COMMAND HEADQUARTERS * YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR** , according to the Pete-penned sign on the front door. In the quiet haven of suburbia, they all try to grab some well-deserved rest in preparation for _babybabybaby._

Only there is no rest to be had, because someone in Panic (or possibly several someones) apparently can't keep their mouth(s) shut. Given the incestuous nature of the Decaydance/FBR family, it isn't long until the whole label knows, and it just goes on from there. What's circulating is not, at least, the whole biology-defying unabridged version (thank god); but thanks to the wonders of electronic communication, soon half the Chicago scene has heard that Pete Wentz will somehow be coming into possession of a newborn baby in the near future. Even weirder, that he intends to _keep_ it.

The upshot of all this is that he's got people congratulating him nearly nonstop over his first few days home (many of them employing the is-it-good, is-it-bad tone that one might use with a pregnant 17-year-old, but still). He hears good wishes in person and over the phone, via AIM and text message _(congr@ts re: th bb!!)_ and, for the old-fashioned, Hallmark cards with sparkly storks on the outside and terrible poetry on the inside. And, while Pete's always thought of himself as a physically affectionate person ("grabby," Patrick calls it, but that's just 'cause he's a touchphobe and a spoilsport), he has never received this many hugs per day in his whole life. That's totally okay, though, it takes his mind off the handful of death threats that also find their way into his mailbox.

But he doesn't even have time to weather that first influx, because the next week Fall Out Boy gets photographed buying _ohmygodthetiniestsocksinexistence_ at Babies 'R' Us, and suddenly the band has a media situation on their hands. The PR chick from the label is flipping her shit, oh man. It'd be really funny to watch if it were anyone but them. But even Pete, who generally subscribes to the "no such thing as bad publicity" school of thought, has to admit that there's no way they can go with the true story, and wrack his brains for a halfway-convincing fakesplanation.

The gossip-rag and celebrity-blog headlines span a continuum of absurdity from **PETE SNAPPED SHOPPING...FOR ASHLEE'S BABY?** to **FALL OUT BOY ADOPTS AFRICAN ORPHAN** ("...hmm," says Pete, staring at that one, and Patrick narrows his eyes. "Don't you even think about it. _No,"_ and then, "Stop pouting. Quit it. _Pete._ \- Okay! Okay! I won't entirely rule out the possibility of _someday._ Someday _far in the future._ Happy?") to **WENTZ'S SECRET LOVECHILD** to scenarios involving clones and/or aliens and/or voodoo. Pete is amused that the last category is probably closer to the truth than anything else, what the fuck.

He looks again at **PETE SNAPPED SHOPPING...FOR ASHLEE'S BABY?** splashed over the cover of _Us,_ and repeats, "Hmmm."

-

"Hello?"

"Ash? Hey" - he has to check the "hon" that his mouth still automatically forms - "it's Pete."

They've only talked a few times in the months since the breakup, but unlike, oh, all of Pete's previous relationships ever, they've been thoroughly comfortable when they have. It's a nice change. He's glad for it; over time he'd gotten to genuinely like the girl underneath the Image, and even if things didn't work out it's still a good feeling to occasionally just check in with a friend.

Of course, what he's calling her for now is a bit more than just checking in with a friend.

"Hi, you!" She sounds sincerely pleased to hear from him, her voice bouncing brightly down the line. "How's life?"

Pete takes a deep breath. "Well, uh. I'm calling to ask you for a really big favor." 

"Name it," Ashlee says.

Pete is currently feeling like a toolier tool than he ever has before (and that's saying something). "Uh, I mean like _really big."_

-

Next week, there's Ashlee on the front of _People,_ snapped walking from a Starbucks and sporting a noticeable baby bump through her sweater, with the headline **IT'S CONFIRMED: ASHLEE'S PREGNANT!**

Inside are details, an article: _...Simpson, 25, has confirmed that she is indeed pregnant by her former flame, rocker Pete Wentz, who was photographed purchasing baby clothes with his band yesterday. Simpson said that she and Wentz are on "amicable terms" and plan to co-raise the child, but added that "we definitely aren't getting back together, no."_

"Did I do okay?" Ashlee says anxiously on the phone to Pete that night. "I made sure to request privacy for the family in this joyous time, et cetera. And obviously I'll be adding more padding as the months go on..."

"Awesome, that's awesome. I really, _really_ owe you one, Ash." Pete blows out a relieved breath; and then a thought occurs to him. "Wait, what about. Uh. Your dad's not gonna be too thrilled about this, is he?"

He can hear a slow smile creep into her voice as she says, "Actually, I think he'll be very much in favor of the idea."

"...ooooookay then," says Pete dubiously, thinking to himself that Ashlee, though a lovely girl, is no judge of character whatsoever. "Thanks again, hon" - _whoops, shit_ \- "from the bottom of our hearts and stuff."

-

Before Pete even has the chance to get in touch and explain - or explain what he can, anyway - Mikey Way hears the news and calls from Jersey. The Ways are creepy like that sometimes. 

"Congrats, man," Mikey says, sounding as bored and blasé about freaky mutant male pregnancy cases as anything else. "So when're you" - and Pete can't tell, quite, but now it sounds like Mikey might be trying not to giggle out loud - "when're you, uh. Due?"

"Next February," says Pete, annoyed. "How'd _you_ hear?"

"Oh, Frank told me," Mikey tells him airily. "We've got, y'know. Connections."

"'Connections,'" Pete mutters, making finger-quotes at the phone. "More like the Jersey Mafia -"

"Anyway!" Mikey says brightly. "If there's anything me or 'Licia or Gee can do for you guys, your wish is our command."

Pete opens his mouth to inform Mikey that they've got everything under control, thanks; but Patrick (who's listening in on the other line, the bastard), interrupts, "Actually, if your brother's around in the next couple months, we _were_ looking for someone to paint the nursery."

-

This is about the same time that Patrick gets into Pete's ever-expanding pile of pregnancy & childrearing books. Pete discovered in his sixth week that he kind of loves them a lot, and since then he's whiled away many a happy hour sitting cross-legged on a pillow and reading intently about forceps or creamed spinach or something. They all have cheesy titles like _What to Expect if You're Expecting_ and prose clearly designed to soothe the panic of first-time parents; Pete's personal favorite is by a guy named Dr. Benjamin Spock, though to be honest that's pretty much solely for the name.

( _"Spock,_ how cool is that? Like on Star Trek!" he says, waving the book enthusiastically at Patrick. "I kind of wanna name baby after him, except I think it'd probably get mocked a lot in school."

"Pete." Patrick holds up a thick volume. "Why in all hell did you buy something called _The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding?"_

Pete looks shifty. Patrick flips through the book, skimming a couple of pages at random, and then pauses. "Ah. Pictures."

"Dude, there are some seriously nice racks in there!"

Patrick coughs something that sounds remarkably like "Sicko."

"I don't see _you_ averting _your_ eyes."

"That would be my _horrified fascination_ at your _nasty-ass breastfeeding fetish."_

"Shut your face, I just like tits. Who doesn't?"

"Not when they've got _babies_ attached to them!")

However, Pete soon comes to regret the day he let Patrick look at a single word of this stuff, because Patrick, not usually a big reader, absorbs it _all._ Every chapter and chart and diagram, every Helpful Hint and and Very Important Warning, and of course half of the information completely contradicts the other half. 

This makes him what he calls "hypervigilant" and what Pete calls "paranoid." 

"You might be the most nervous father-to-be in the whole history of the world, ever," laughs Joe after Patrick bars Pete from the vicinity of the microwave for fear of baby-killing death rays.

Patrick returns to his headphones, looking stubborn and muttering under his breath about how it's better to be safe than sorry.

"Well, I mean," says Andy indulgently, "to be fair, he's kind of justified. His kid IS gonna be raised by Pete Wentz."

-

Pete, on the other hand. Everyone had expected him to be the jumpiest, moodiest, bitchiest pregnant dude ever - Pete himself included - but he finds himself handling everything in the most unexpected way. He's withdrawn into himself so much, but for once in a good way; he feels more secure and present in his body than he has in years, more grounded in physicality. He's also treating said body better than he _ever_ has, probably, now that he has a responsibility to do so. The nastiness of withdrawal is finally wearing off, and wow, life is actually a lot more balanced when he's not mixing-and-matching prescriptions with blithe disregard to personal safety. _If you fuck yourself up now,_ he reminds himself every morning, _it's not just yourself you'll be fucking up._

Mostly he's discovering that being self-absorbed, self-obsessed even, has its odd and lovely advantages when inside your self there's another self slowly blooming. In the middle of paperwork or family dinners or conference calls or hanging out with the guys, sometimes he'll just stop and think _babybabybaby,_ hold it inside like a secret.

The only thing Pete does worry about in these early months is whether he really has enough love to give, enough to be a good parent. He already knows that he loves the baby - loves it with a primal ferocity that surprises him. Loves it enough to die for it, any time, any place, no second thoughts, no questions asked. But who really knows what's _enough?_ Will he be patient enough, wise enough, will he be there for soccer games and chicken pox and know what to say when it's crying? Will he love it enough?

The first time he feels the baby move inside of him, Pete stops worrying about that one.

 

**SEPTEMBER: t minus 5 months**

Maybe they really are two sides of the same coin, because that's the only thing Patrick isn't worried about at all. He knows Pete will love the baby more than enough. Loving sufficiently has never been Pete's problem.

He reserves the right to freak out about absolutely everything else that could possibly go wrong, though. Like when Pete starts bitching about backaches and headaches and heartburn and swollen ankles (all of which attacked at once, if he's to be believed).

"I looked everything up," Patrick tells him tiredly. He strokes his fingers through Pete's hair, which pregnancy has made thicker, darker, and glossier than ever. "They _are_ all normal side effects of pregnancy. Like, even the...usual kind, and I'm guessing _your_ body really, _really_ doesn't know how to handle them."

"Every time I think my life can't get any more surreal," Pete sighs. "Seriously, every time. I wake up and find, like, my band's album at Number One, or myself dating Ashlee Simpson, or my dick all over the internet. Or me getting knocked up by my _boyfriend,_ hey, look at that." He shifts again on the couch, trying in vain to find a comfortable position. "My _mom_ saw me _pregnant_ today, okay. It was fucking weird. Why does this shit keep happening to _me?"_

Patrick reflects that he totally shares the feeling, if you just substitute "this shit" with "Pete Wentz." But he keeps the thought to himself, because discretion is the better part of valor when it comes to cranky pregnant people (and also maybe because of the dorky, high-schoolish glow he got when Pete said _boyfriend)._

-

When Pete calls for him from the backyard - where he's lying in a pile of red and yellow maple leaves, cloudgazing - Patrick expects a request for ice water or foot rubbing or a lap to lay his head in again. 

But it's not any of those.

"Feel it? Feel it kick? Baby's gonna be a soccer player, too."

Patrick looks dazedly at his hand, Pete's stomach, his hand on Pete's stomach; says, "Oh my god," into the bright autumn air.

They go in for the weekly check-up (in heavy disguise; last month the internet had already started in with the unkind comments about Pete's visible thickening around the waist) and Dr. Bacal tells them that the baby now weighs about a quarter of a pound, has eyebrows and lashes, and can suck its thumb. At the end of the appointment he lets them listen to its tiny heartbeat with a special stethoscope.

Later that day Patrick corners Pete in the kitchen to whisper an apology of sorts. "Glad you're a stubborn asshole, after all."

Pete puts his arms around Patrick, gingerly, careful of the blossoming bump, and kisses his temple. "God, I'm glad _you_ came around."

"Yeah," says Patrick weakly, "well, I figure if Schwarzenegger could do it -"

"- I fucking love that movie -"

Patrick traces his fingertips down over the now-pronounced swell of Pete's stomach, and smiles.

Pete is beautiful in pregnancy. Patrick doesn't dissolve into flights of rhapsody and mush very often, he's not that guy, but really there's no other word for it. Pete does this sometimes, mostly without knowing it: flares out into a weird, unexpected beauty. Patrick has always just laughed at all of Pete's angsty myspace-angled camwhoring and Look At My Smoky Eyes airbrushed photospreads, the ones that you're supposed to find sexy. He's known Pete too long - seen him in too many absurd situations, crappy moods, humiliating fiascos, and/or ugly shirts - to be impressed by that shit. But then there's Pete in unguarded, unselfconscious moments, moments when the last thing on his mind is the way he looks - the bright, brief flash of a real smile; that soft look in his eyes when he's around friends, loved ones, family, even his stupid dog; the line of his throat as he throws his head back in laughter. In those moments, Pete can undo Patrick instantly and totally. And so can Pete pregnant, apparently.

Not that Patrick _tells_ Pete any of this.

"Oh man, the bartskull isn't holding up too well, is it?" he observes instead.

"When I got it, I wasn't really planning on getting pregnant," Pete says, looking mournfully down at the cracked lines of ink. "I don't think it'll ever be the same again."

"Eh, well." Patrick waves a careless hand. "At least it was butt-ugly to begin with."

"Hey, you told me you thought it was sexy!" Pete looks outraged.

"That's because it's _practically on top of your dick,_ which _is_ sexy," explains Patrick. "As every single person in the internet-connected world has seen." He rubs the heel of his hand over Pete's stretched, split tattoo down into dark, scratchy hair, and Pete rolls his shoulders back, purrs. 

-

Patrick's trying to go to bed here, thanks, but Pete is busy moaning and groaning about his sex life. Which is really annoying, seeing as these days Pete's sex life is _Patrick's_ sex life also, and Patrick is very much aware that they haven't had sex in forever. At the beginning of all this they'd both been totally freaking out, and then when they got into the swing of pregnancy it was so _busy_ all of a sudden; and when Pete had started to show, he'd gotten significantly less eager to walk around naked all the time, anyway. 

"I have not gotten off in like, years." Pete sighs gustily. "God damn, I really want an orgasm."

"How convenient that you've got a right hand for that," says Patrick, who is not moving from under these warm covers for the life of him, not even to have sex with Pete Wentz.

"I feel sort of weird jerking off when I'm like this."

"Like what?"

"Pregnant."

"...what."

"I don't know, it's weird. it's like there's someone else _there,_ you know?"

"Pete, you have _sex_ when your _dog_ is in the room. For god's sake."

"I guess." 

Patrick rolls his eyes. "Go rub one out in the bathroom, dipshit, it'll make you feel better."

"So I hear that for normal birth, like with girls and contractions and all," says Pete, not going anywhere, "they sometimes use orgasms to help the labor along."

"Really?"

"'s what my sister said. Along with the other stuff like warm showers and Lamaze, I guess, the mother coming helps the baby, uh. Come."

"Huh." Patrick can't decide if that's hot or not. He's leaning toward 'not'. "It seems like it would be awkward. Do they just hand them a vibrator or what? Like _Hey, go for it!"_

"I know, right?" Pete grins, considering. "Maybe the doctor...lends a helping hand, if you know what I mean and I think you do."

"Ew. Ew, that's gotta count as medical malpractice or something."

Pete's grin becomes an outright leer. "Depends on how good the orgasm was." He laughs, then sighs again. "God _damn,_ I really want an orgasm." 

_Oh, for fuck's sake._ Patrick pokes his head out of his cozy blanket nest. "C'mere then, before I fall asleep the rest of the way."

"Is it okay for baby? I'm kind of weirded out by that part, too."

"All the books say that you can have sex while pregnant, if you're careful," Patrick says, motioning Pete peremptorily toward him. "You're not even _that_ far along."

"All the books say that dudes can't get pregnant, too, and look how that worked out!" 

"I'll blow you."

Pete hops into bed immediately. "If you insist."

-

Pete puts up a sickeningly cute Anne Geddes calendar ("oh ick," says Ryan Ross, _"tacky,")_ and marks the remaining months off like a countdown: _t minus five months, t minus four months, t minus three months, t minus two months, t minus one month. three weeks, two weeks, one week, six days, five, four, three, two, one._

"Dr. Bacal says it's almost never that precise," Patrick reminds him, "like to the day and everything. Also, wow, way to regress to fifth grade space camp?"

"Fuck you," says Pete amiably, and writes **_liftoff!!!_** on February 1st.

(Patrick calls him a dorkass, but later he adds a little drawing of a space shuttle. And some hostile Martians with photon phasers. Pete doesn't get to be the only one who's a little regressive around here.)

-

Baby's being fussy tonight, wriggling and kicking uncomfortably inside Pete and not letting him sleep. Patrick rubs the convex curve of Pete's stomach in soft circles while Pete mumbles, more to himself than to Patrick, "I just have to keep in mind the point of it all, man, the point of the paaaaaaaain. A little somebody I can teach to scream hardcore and take for their first tattoos and clean their cuts when they get into fights and push on the swings and put in little pumpkin costumes for Halloween and tell them bedtime stories every night until they're like ten and don't want me to and then I'll still tell them bedtime stories anyway -"

"Look, this baby is not Hemmy," Patrick cautions. "You can't go dressing it up in, I don't know, infant-size fursuits or something, and posting pictures all over the internet."

"Why not?" Pete's eyes are gleaming already at the thought. "Kids don't mind that shit. Not for the first couple years anyway." At Patrick's look of deep skepticism, he adds, "C'mon, I'll let you play too! Imagine baby in a teeny tiny little trucker hat," and Patrick is suddenly assaulted by this new, unfamiliar, and powerful urge to just _flail._

Instead he settles for singing the baby to sleep, mouth close to Pete's belly, warm breath condensing on Pete's skin. "Good Night" from the White Album. Any child of Patrick's is going to be _immersed_ in the classics, yes sir.

Pete's voice comes through the darkness, soft and sleepy. 

"...I wonder if they do make infant-size fursuits?" 

 

**OCTOBER: t minus 4 months**

What with _babybabybaby_ growing bigger and more noticeable every day, Pete hasn't been out in public for a while now - not real, metropolitan public, anyway - and as they hit month five he's feeling a little cabin-feverish. Fortunately Chicago in October is cold enough that he can get away with one of those down-filled jackets, the enormously puffy kind that could hide, like, _eight_ baby bumps and have room left over. It does contrast a little weirdly with his celebrity-incognito sunglasses, but whatever. (Though he suspects that Patrick, who just threw on a hoodie and pulled his hat down over his eyes, is silently snickering at him.)

Downtown they get Thai food in blessed anonymity and loiter around sipping lattes - Pete's decaf, of course - while they consider where to spend their afternoon of freedom. Because he is the lamest excuse for a rockstar ever to walk the earth, Pete's thinking about a trip to Shedd Aquarium. He knows Patrick adores the fishies and stuff, and while Pete himself is...not so much with the adoring of fishies and stuff, he does adore Patrick, pretty much. So he ends up opting for the aquarium, and manages to make it sound like his idea, too, which is always a plus with Patrick.

They take the train and the bus out to Shedd, where Patrick of course spends ridiculous amounts of time in even the minor exhibits, fascinated by boring-ass things like jellyfish while Pete twitches next to him. When they get to the seahorses, though, Patrick stops in his tracks and starts laughing.

"Wha?" says Pete.

"It just occurred to me, dude, the seahorses feel your pain."

_"Wha?"_

"Male seahorses incubate their offspring in their bodies," explains Patrick, still laughing. "If I remember right, they're the only species that reproduces by male pregnancy."

Pete squints at the sign, and hey, sure enough. This fact comforts him unreasonably. "I'm not a total freak!"

"I wouldn't go _that_ far..."

"Shut up."

"Man," says Patrick, reading the sign himself now, "I don't know if _eggs_ would be better or worse than a whole live baby. Oh, except they only have to carry them for like, two weeks."

"That's not very fucking fair." 

"But they also have to go through 72 hours of labor and have - jesus - up to 200 babies at a time."

"Agh." Pete cringes, pressing one hand to his stomach and the other hand flat against the glass. "Solidarity, guys. Solidarity."

The seahorses stare at him. So do several people around them. Patrick says hastily, "Moving right along," and drags Pete to the Oceanarium.

There's a brand new infant whale in there, and they watch it through the glass for half an hour solid. The grown-up whales are keeping an eye on it at all times; it's trying to imitate their swimming, but is still completely (and adorably) clumsy in the water. Patrick hums "Baby Beluga," and when Pete looks at him, he smiles a little and bumps his knuckles against Pete's and bends his head down to sing, slightly louder, to their own baby.

Pete's heart twists hard in his chest, and yeah, maybe he's ridiculously hormonal and maybe Patrick hates public displays of affection and maybe there are little kids present and everything, but he doesn't care, he has to kiss Patrick right now. Except Patrick is apparently in a really, _really_ good humor after all the jellyfish-contemplating he managed to get in this afternoon, because he kisses back for once. And kisses back, and kisses back. Pete has never been one to pass up an opportunity for kissing, so he decides that the little kids can just deal, and they end up spending another half-hour making out in that low, wavery blue light, only slightly impeded by Pete's voluminous coat.

Pete makes a mental note: _patrick + marine life (+ baby?) = public tongue kissing allowed. goodgoodgood. exploit in future._

"I'm gonna love your babies the mostest, Patrick Stump," he mumbles drowsily into Patrick's hoodie, head on his shoulder as they ride the Red Line home.

"Babies plural?" says Patrick, looking half amused and half alarmed.

"A whole _album_ full of babies," says Pete, half asleep. "Yeah, when we first got pregnant, I was thinking of it kind of like, like one of our songs, you know? Something we made, together, just you and me." Patrick snorts at that, and Pete amends, "Well. You and me and a little bit of, uh. Fairy dust."

"Little bit of _nuclear radiation,_ more like," says Patrick, but he's smiling again.

-

At the crack of noon on Saturday, Gerard Way shows up at Patrick's house in a flurry of creative genius and coffee. With him he brings paint cans, draft pencils, brushes, enamels, stencils, measuring tapes, sheets, newspaper, a stepladder, and Frank.

"Anything specific you're looking for?" he asks, chewing his lip and rocking back and forth on his heels. Patrick, who has no artistic eye whatsoever, shrugs and handwaves vaguely: "Nah, knock yourself out." Gerard's face lights up in a way that makes him look incredibly adorable and also about twelve; he rolls up his sleeves, pushes his hair back from his face, and proceeds to take over the nursery.

Except for Frank, he won't really let anyone in while he's working. At all. But by dint of peering around doors and through keyholes every time the Great Artiste and his humble assistant duck outside for another cigarette break and possible covert makeout session, Pete manages to catch a few glimpses of wide, sweeping curves and deep, rich colors, a rolling skyline and what might be the outlines of branches.

Frank and Gee's loud and easily-overheard arguments are a bit more informative if Pete eavesdrops for long enough.

"You can't put that in there, you ass, you're gonna traumatize the little guy."

"Aw, Frankie, c'mon!"

 _"No,_ Gerard. And put away the carmine red, okay, dripping blood is probably not all that baby-appropriate either."

"Please?" Pete can picture Gerard's big, pleading eyes as he stretches out the vowel. "Just one little vampire?"

"Dude."

-

For days and days the house reeks of paint thinner and unwashed Way (jesus, Pete hasn't had such a noseful of _that_ since Warped), and Patrick's sleep keeps getting disturbed by Gerard's comings and goings at all hours (his average workday goes from 3 p.m. to 5 a.m. or thereabouts). But the final product is all worth it.

Pete hears Patrick suck in a soft breath behind him as they gaze around. The nursery has become a forest: a deep, twilit wildwood of ancient tree trunks hiding dark animal nooks, flowers like jewels in the moss below, ivy tangled over branches. Fey shapes peek through the trees, bright eyes and slender shadows; fireflies glow in the canopy overhead. There's a hint of the day's last light at the horizon, palest gold, fading up to successively deepening shades of blue, and finally to velvet black. The ceiling is black, too, and lit with stars - sparkling points scattered in unearthly constellations, here a comet's fiery streak, there the soft luminescence of a nebula, celestial details that human eyes could never see from our world.

"What do you think?" Gerard says anxiously, watching their faces. "I originally wanted to go with something more gothic, sort of a dark-fairytale aesthetic, y'know, wraiths and werewolves and witches and all that, a bit of an _edge,_ but Frank-"

"Are you kidding me," interrupts Pete, "this is utterly fucking perfect. I'm gonna _kiss_ Mikey for lending you out, holy shit."

Gerard pinks, but looks pleased. "Hope it's okay, but I arranged for the carpet people to come by tomorrow. I thought maybe something dark green, you know, all soft and thick, like grass -" and then, "mmf," as he's engulfed in a spontaneous, enthusiastic Wentz hug.

-

During the next week they baby-proof the house, putting all toxic substances high up out of reach, fitting childproof locks on the cabinets, setting up waist-high baby gates in every doorway, and molding soft, rounded rubber edges on all the sharp corners that baby could possibly hit its little head on: tables, chairs, couches, beds. Pete makes Patrick do most of the hard work, of course. "Delicate condition," he reminds Patrick dolefully, rubbing the swell of his stomach, and then laughs at Patrick whenever he has to haul his short little self up onto a stepstool or countertop to reach something, and _then_ claims sanctuary from any and all retaliatory punches on the grounds of his delicate condition again.

Mostly he just amuses himself playing with Hemingway. Or trying to, because Hemmy is in a bad mood these days. His liberty is being restricted in ways that he had never dreamed possible - he isn't allowed to jump onto Pete's stomach anymore! what the hell! - and he's been making his displeasure known to one and all.

"Hey, boy," says Pete, scritching his sulky dog behind the ears. "You should probably know that there's gonna be some changes around here." Hemmy glowers, and Pete holds up his hands. "Sorry, Hems. But you've got a little buddy on the way! You excited to play with babybabybaby? Are ya? Are ya?" 

"Uh, wow," says Patrick, "let's give it a few years before you let him play with our _baby."_

Pete ignores him. "Are ya? That's right. Good puppy. You're still my favorite," he assures Hemmy, who looks slightly mollified. "Until baby comes, then you might have some competition."

The weekend is stormy, and Patrick won't let him out of the house in case baby gets hit by lightning or something, what the fuck. A very bored Pete ends up discovering that Gerard must have used some special paints in their phantasmagorical mural, because it's _even cooler_ at night: each firefly glows in the dark, the glitter of creatures' eyes is visible in the undergrowth and among the trees, every star is a bright point on the ceiling. After that he spends time in there most evenings, lights off and curtains drawn, curled up inside that glimmering darkness. 

Patrick doesn't barge in, ever, but does ask him curiously, "What do you do in there?" 

"Contemplate the mysteries and monsters of childhood." (Patrick snorts. Whatever, it was a totally poetic way to put it. Pete makes sure to incorporate it into his next blogspot post). And that _is_ mostly what he does in there, sometimes for hours at a time, lies on his back in the velvet-moss carpet and dreams dreams of life's earliest years. He thinks about his own childhood, and the kind he wants baby to have; its pure awesomeness sometimes and pure scariness other times; the myriad ways to fuck it up and the myriad ways to...not fuck it up. Hopefully.

Sometimes he thinks of nothing at all, just stares up at one of the brilliant-painted meteors and lets the stillness wrap around him until it's almost tangible, a black blanket of silence. Rocks back and forth a little, like a shell in the waves, like a living cradle; whispers sing-song "babybabybaby."

Pete has never been totally comfortable in the dark. But he'd like his kid to be.

 

**NOVEMBER: t minus 3 months**

Third trimester, and the latest fun symptom is, apparently, bleeding gums. Bleeding, _swelling_ gums, what the fuck. Patrick never realized that pregnancy was _terrifying._

"It's just 'cause I'm a freak, right?" Pete asks plaintively at his weekly check-up. "Chicks don't have to go through this, right?"

"Actually," says the doctor brightly, "even 'normal' pregnancy is quite a physically traumatic experience, you know. It's pretty hard on the human body to, essentially, carry around a giant parasite for nine months."

"Oh, _cool,"_ says Pete. 

Patrick, for his part, decides that if nothing else, this entire ordeal has increased his respect for the ladies a hundredfold. "Weaker sex" his ass.

Pete is being a trooper, though, distracting himself from his various aches and pains as best he can. He's really showing now, showing so much that he doesn't dare go out anywhere there might conceivably be paparazzi; by now it's pretty obvious that it's less beer belly and more baby bump, dude or not. But he can still practice Lamaze with Patrick and read another gazillion mutually incompatible childraising books and bring home Clandestine onesies in every color of the rainbow. 

And, of course, have heated arguments over baby names. Patrick has a hell of a time persuading Pete that "Jack or Sally!" might be taking Tim Burton fanboyism just that little bit too far. Right after that comes this epic standoff over how to combine their last names. Is it going to be baby Stump-Wentz or baby Wentz-Stump? Should they go back to the old school and re-add the _h_ in _Stumph?_ Did Patrick ever really get it legally removed in the first place? How is this going to work on the birth certificate? And so on. 

Joe and Andy, brought in as mediators, suggest compromising with a creative combination which sounds like a horse sneezing and could be transcribed as "wumph." Pete finds this very funny. Patrick says, "Hahaha _I don't think so._ Fine, you win, jackass, your name can go first."

"Solomon's choice, right, you'd rather give up your kid than sacrifice it to such a shitty name. Wuuuuuumf." Pete is damn near falling over laughing. Patrick would be blaming the hormones if he didn't already know that nah, Pete just has a really stupid sense of humor. "Wumph wumph wumph, it sounds like something obscene and British -"

Patrick tunes him out, thinking of something else already. "What's it gonna call us? Daddy and Daddy will get confusing fast."

"Daddy Patrick and Mommy Pete?"

"Fuck off, Trohman."

"How about Dad One and Dad Two?" Pete's been reading too much _The Cat in the Hat._

Patrick gives him an _I just *knew* we were only buying all those children's books so that *you* could read them_ glance, and retorts, "Only if I get to be Dad One." Pete takes a moment to be wounded - 

"I'm carrying it! I'm the one who's gotta sacrifice my girlish figure here, dude!"

"Yeah, but _I'm_ the one who knocked _you_ up, that makes me the default dad." 

"That makes you a _tool of the heteronormative patriarchy,_ is what."

\- while Andy creases his brow, thinking. "Papa Pete and Papa Patrick? I don't know, that's a lot of alliteration."

"Oh god," says Joe, making clutching motions in the general vicinity of his heart. "Oh god, I cannot take the cute. Papa Pete and Papa Patrick! Oh god."

"That reminds me. Hey, Joe," and Patrick flags Joe over absently with his eyes still glued to _Pregnancy for Dummies._

"Yo." 

"Yeah, we wanted to ask if you'd be baby's godfather." 

Joe looks a little surprised and a lot touched. "Oh, man."

"Wait, shit, can Jews be godfathers?" Pete wonders from behind _Green Eggs and Ham._

"Shut up, Pete."

Joe flicks Pete on the forehead and grins a great big grin at Patrick. "I'd be honored."

"Just don't go trying to circumcise my baby or anything," Pete warns darkly before returning to the complete works of Dr. Seuss.

_"Pete!"_

-

In practice, this kid's going to have about fifty different godparents, most of them boys in bands. Bill Beckett keeps giving them a lot of supercilious advice on proper care of infants. Frank Iero offers to present it to one of the dons of the five families, or something. Brendon Urie is so excited, seriously! He totally volunteers to babysit for the rest of his natural life!

"You know what you should do," Ryan Ross tells them meditatively, "a traditional home birth. With a midwife and like...herbs and stuff."

Brendon snickers right in Ryan's blissed-out little face. "Herbs. Yeah, I just bet."

Patrick looks at the skinny, dark-haired mass of twitches who's beaming at him and says, "I like you a lot, Urie, but you're not getting near my baby." He swivels around and gives Ryan the evil eye. "Are you _fucking crazy_ this is _male pregnancy_ we're talking _you stoner dipshit._ Home birth my _ass."_

"Hey, I do have siblings, you know," Brendon interjects in an aggrieved tone. "Lots of siblings, in fact. And I didn't break a single one of them."

"But it would be such a _holistic experience,"_ says Ryan earnestly.

"Sorry, Ross, but I'm gonna have to catch up with you later," says Pete, getting up. "I think baby might be getting a contact high."

-

They also finally get down to the actual meat and bones of learning what Travie dubs "mad infant skillz": heating bottles, bathing tiny slippery bodies, changing diapers, stimulating the young mind and all that. Various family members start sending baby things over: clothes, bottles, quilts, high chairs, changing tables, _useful_ stuff. Which is good, because baby's actual dads can't stop buying toys.

"Most spoiled kid ever and it's not even born yet," groans Patrick as Pete tosses yet another stuffed animal into the shopping cart. "Pete, seriously, enou-" and then his eyes light on this precious little Winnie-the-Pooh music box that he just _has_ to buy.

Meanwhile Pete takes it into his head to learn to _knit_ for baby, what the fuck, and in the evenings he can be found in Patrick's armchair surrounded by great tangles of pale green yarn, needles clicking sloppily but enthusiastically away, resting his hands on the soft swell of a stomach that's bigger every day. 

In between all this, they track Ashlee Simpson paparazzi shots with near-obsessive attention. She's out and about in LA in fine style, healthy tanned glow and pretty maternity clothes and an ever-expanding baby bump. The rest of her body is still suspiciously slim; but hey, who's going to have a problem with that in Hollywood? The charade, it appears, is holding strong.

Pete pages through the sheaf of celebrity magazines that Patrick brought home (he'd demanded half a dozen different titles, citing a need to "check up on our Cunning Plan") and mumbles, "Knowing my luck, a full and explicit photoset of my naked stomach will mysteriously surface on Oh No They Didn't, and Fall Out Boy will get thirteen million more Google hits and end up bigger than Jesus."

"Um," says Patrick, who is never, ever going to tell Pete about the part where he right-click-saved the Sidekick pictures the day after they leaked and proceeded to jerk off to them a few (hundred) times. Some relationship revelations, he feels, are really better kept to oneself.

-

Patrick wakes up to Pete's urgent whisper in the dim pre-dawn. "Patrick, Patrick, hey, Patrick, I have something to tell you." 

He rubs at his eyes with his fists and prepares to soothe away any number of nightmares. Except Pete's not distraught, not shaking, and his eyes are lucid clear.

"Mmmph. Whatizzit?"

"It's a girl," whispers Pete, "baby is a girl."

"Did an angel come down and tell you so?" If it's not a case of nightmare freakout, Patrick is too tired to be polite. 

"No, I had this dream. Not a nightmare, a good dream." Fortunately Pete is too absorbed to notice sarcasm. "I dreamt that I was standing onstage, playing a show. It was a _good_ one: crazy crowd, and all this pyro everywhere, and your voice sounded like, like heaven. And I came on down on 'Saturday' like always and the pit was fucking _packed,_ just this solid mass of bodies, you know? So I was screaming away on the chorus and all, and then I noticed something sort of floating on top of the crowd. I thought somebody surfing, right, but it seemed like the wrong shape..."

Patrick opens his mouth to ask if this story has a point, then thinks better of it and covers with a gigantic yawn.

"It was coming toward me, whatever it was," Pete continues, "and the crowd was keeping it up with their hands. They were packed so tight that it never got anywhere near the ground. And I was curious, so I went a bit further in to look, and it came closer, and I saw that it was a cradle. It was fucking crazy, Patrick. Just carried along on this sea of people, like fucking Moses or something. So I dropped the mic, obviously, and waded right into the crowd - good thing it was a dream, security would have been _pissed_ \- and it came right to me, on all those waves of hands. And I got ahold of it and looked inside, and inside there was this little baby, sleeping. - Which, _what,_ because it was _so_ loud in there, but whatever. Dream. Anyway, she was sleeping, and I could see her face in the light from the pyro and she was _ours,_ Patrick. The baby's a girl. I dreamt it." 

Patrick has his doubts about this, but he doesn't utter a word of them. Pete's got that soft look in his eyes again, and Patrick can't bring himself to go harshing the buzz of anyone who looks this way. "Eh, I don't really care _what_ we get," he says instead, "boy or girl, 's long as it's healthy and stuff..."

"Obviously, yeah," says Pete, who's touching his stomach again, "but I just thought you might want to know anyway. Girl."

Patrick, who is _definitely_ too tired for a discussion of Pete's putative psychic powers, doesn't press the issue. "Does that mean we have to go now and exchange everything for pink?"

Pete smacks him with a pillow and says something about raising kids in a non-gender-discriminatory environment, but it's like six in the god damn morning and Patrick's already falling back asleep. Whatever, he needs to be in top condition for the rigors of fatherhood.

 

**DECEMBER: t minus 2 months**

They fly up to NYC that weekend to finish up some business before Pete is effectively immobilized by the pregnancy; once the home stretch gets underway, he's not going _anywhere._ Doctor's orders. They're cheating a bit as it is: technically he was supposed to stick to Chicago after he hit his final trimester.

He gets out of some tedious publicity thing he spent half the damn day at to find a message from Travie blinking on his sidekick: _I herd yr n town, petey. Get yr sweet ass to ak47 tonite, k? 8 pm work for u? Got some shit to go over w/ u._

Pete groans inwardly, because, just - he's exhausted, so fucking wiped, and the baby's been kicking hard and he's been getting really bad leg cramps this week and it just never stops. But he's Pete Wentz, so he texts back, _ill b thr,_ and wishes to god that he could pop a caffeine pill or six.

At seven fifty-nine he walks into Angels & Kings and is blinded, deafened, and bowled over by an explosion of hollers and confetti.

"Oh my god," he says when the metaphorical smoke clears, blinking around at the banners, balloons, and half his label assembled in front of him wearing identical beaming grins. "You losers threw me a _baby shower?"_

\- 

Everyone present must have juggled their schedules around something awful to be here, especially so near to the holidays, and Pete is...really touched, actually. He jumps around a bit (carefully, minding the stomach) and hugs some people and licks Patrick's cheek to annoy him and then dives into the presents (because ooh, presents). He starts with a box labeled "from bden to baby!!!!!!!!!!!" in a sloppy hand, ripping off the paper to find baby's first keyboard: a nifty wee bright-colored thing that really works (Patrick tries middle C and pronounces the pitch solid). Ryan and Spencer hand their gifts over together: a teeny, tiny pair of designer sneakers (Spencer) and a teeny, tiny newsboy cap (Ryan). Bill Beckett's present includes a giant collection of teething rings ("for baby when it starts teething") and a giant bottle of Jack Daniel's ("for baby's _dads_ when it starts teething. Trust me, the crying, the _screaming,_ oh god.")

Gabe brought a plush cobra.

"Gabe Saporta, you will not induct my baby into your cult," Pete tells him.

"What about mine?" says Ryan Ross out of the corner of his mouth, touching the "Q" tattoo on his bicep and looking sort of devious.

"Yeah, no," says Pete, "no hippie séance cannabis covens, either. Sorry."

Meanwhile Jon Walker is over in the corner taking bets on the sex of the baby. Half the label has already invested some serious cash in their predictions, which include Male, Female, Emo Androgyne, Extraterrestrial, Divine À La Jesus, and B-Movie-Style Mutant Freak Of Nature.

"Whatever, fuck you all!" Pete says to the gamblers, throwing an arm around Patrick's shoulders. "We've got some damn good rockstar genetics going on here."

"Eh, I don't know about that. Your best hope, Wentz," Travis says, "is that it takes after Patrick." 

"I really agree," Pete assures him.

"Hey," says Patrick, "quit insulting my taste. Both of you."

-

Now that they're so close to time, Pete's experiencing a whole bunch of what the books call Pelvic Discomfort. He tries heating pads and hot-water bottles first; Patrick kneels over him in bed to apply them below Pete's navel, over dark red stretch marks and the now-ridiculously-distended bartskull tattoo. Next it's massage, Patrick's hands moving across and around Pete's hips - or where Pete's hips _used_ to be - while he hums along with the slow, smooth blues rock playing in the background. _I can tell you taste like the sky 'cause you look like rain..._

This sort of backfires, in that Pete gets all turned on.

"Patrick," he says, nuzzling against Patrick's jaw to feel the vibrations of his voice there. "PatrickPatrickPatrick, put your hands on me," and he has to twist his hips up at an absurd angle to rub up against Patrick's leg, but dear god, is it ever worth it.

Patrick lifts his lashes, slow curve of a smile. "Is there something you want, Pete?"

Pete tells him, "Fucking _fuck me,"_ adding some tongue to drive the point home; Patrick, however, shakes his head, eyes flicking to Pete's stomach.

"It could hurt it -"

"Her."

"At this point it could maybe hurt her. I don't wanna risk it," Patrick says.

"But..." It comes out an unattractive whine. The pain in his lower half is gone, only to be replaced by an arousal so intense it's uncomfortable; he can't stop moving, squirming, fidgeting under Patrick. "I hate you a lot. Why was it that I wanted to pass on your genes again?"

Patrick glances down at himself. "I have no idea."

"Oh right," Pete says immediately, "it was because you're hot as hell. Now stop talking and come do sexual things to me."

Patrick licks his lower lip and _hmmm_ s, says, "I think I have an idea -" and "Wait a sec." Pete feels the mattress shift as Patrick gets out of bed. He drops his head back into the pillow, closes his eyes and tries to quiet the inconvenient rush of hormones.

He must be more tired than he knew (always is, these days; supporting another life, even a teeny life, is surprisingly hard work) because he dozes off just a bit, still horny and twitching. The next thing he feels is Patrick tying his wrists oh-so-gently to the bedposts with the softest silkiest scarves they own. (Pete thinks they might be neckerchiefs stolen from Ryan Ross, actually. But he doesn't really want to think about Ryan Ross, god love him, when he's trying to have sex here -)

Patrick slides down on him (and fuck, he will _never_ get tired of that sight ever ever ever).

Pete can't see over his own stomach, seriously he can't, so it's a blind surprise when he feels Patrick's lips pressed to the arch of his foot, the sensitive skin on the inside of his ankle; slow, tortuously slow up his calf and inner thigh, and maybe it's the anticipation of each touch to come next, or maybe it's just the hormones, but every sensation is absurdly heightened tonight. He gasps out loud when Patrick presses a single kiss to the base of his cock, licks a single stripe to the top, and then he's mouthing up over The Place Formerly Known As Pete's Hipbones, harder kisses now, biting a little. 

"Noooooo," whines Pete, tugging ineffectually against his bonds. Though the material is deceptively light and slippery against his skin, the knots hold firm. "Come back, Patrick's mouth, come baaaaack."

Patrick takes a moment to laugh at his pain before flicking the tip of his tongue into Pete's navel, at the crest of his stomach. He skims his hands up over the warm, thrumming microcosm of the baby, bending his body somewhat awkwardly to straddle Pete just below it while craning his back and neck to follow his fingers with his mouth: nipples, shoulders, the tender place at the top of his armpits, collarbones, throat...Pete reaches up and meets Patrick's sweet, steady mouth with his own, and he's longing, aching for more, for anything, for everything.

"I can't take this," he hisses down at Patrick as Patrick mouths his neck, still going soft and slow. "Baby's gonna be born with chronic...blueball-itis or something and it'll be all your fault, motherfucker. C' _mere."_

Patrick looks tempted, but shakes his head again, sideburns rubbing crisp against Pete's stubble.

"I promise you _such_ a good lay when this is all over," he says, and the sultry note in his voice makes Pete shiver, "but for now, just. Lemme be paranoid or whatever?" 

Pete relaxes his hands in their delicate restraints and sighs, but it's not entirely the bad kind of sigh; it can't be, not when Patrick's drifting his fingertips up, down, around, over every inch of Pete's body, slow and soft as the record he's singing with again. _You're the sounds I never heard before, off the map where the wild things grow._

Baby pulses inside him, content - sleeping, he thinks, maybe - as the night frost creeps up the windowpanes and Patrick puts his hands all over Pete, spread out like starfish. It feels like claiming. 

"My baby," Patrick murmurs, and he could be talking to Pete, or to the child inside him.

-

When they hit seven and a half months, Dr. Bacal says, "I don't want to alarm you unduly, but..."

 _That's never good,_ thinks Pete.

"If I were you, I would make preparations for the actual birth around about now - pack up a hospital bag, make arrangements with relatives and all that. Due to the, uh, unconventional nature of this pregnancy, there's no way to say for sure if the labor hormones will kick in early. Or late, for that matter. In the case of fetal distress, you may have to go into surgery on very short notice, and there could be complications of other kinds...Don't be caught off-guard."

They take his advice. 

("Do you think they'd let me bring my iPod to the hospital?"

"Probably, yeah."

"Do you think they'd let me bring Hemmy?" 

"No."

"But-"

"Very no.") 

Pete's already experiencing what the doctor terms proto-contractions: weird muscle tightenings that only came once in a while, at first, but that he's now feeling a few times a day. Dr. Bacal says (somewhat doubtfully; after all, their case is pretty much unique) that these minor spasms don't yet mean that it's time for childbirth _right away._

"We expect that as the hormones of labor really engage, you'll begin experiencing much stronger contractions - uh, pseudo-contractions," he tells Pete. "When this happens - and I cannot stress this enough - come in to the hospital _immediately._ We'll have to operate as soon as possible. Your body will be trying its hardest to bear this baby, and, well. You're equipped with a womb - uh, quasi-womb - uh, womb-like structure, but you have not been similarly blessed with a cervix or birth canal..." He trails off delicately.

Patrick goes pale, and Pete makes a really terrible face at the possibilities that his imagination is already conjuring up. "Yeah, no, I understand perfectly. I'll be going under that knife _so fast,_ doctor, trust me." 

"Eeeeeew," he says to Patrick on the car ride home. "You think it'd burst out of my chest like in _Alien?"_

"...did you have to say that? Jesus christ." Patrick's still just as pale as he was in the doctor's office.

"I mean, it _is_ like a giant parasite I'm carrying around for nine months -"

"Can we just stop talking about this, please?" Patrick says tightly. "Like before I hurl all over your car."

-

By Christmastime the fake-contraction-thingies are coming more frequently, several per hour, and Patrick is reaching unprecedented levels of freakoutery. He makes lists and tears them up and makes new ones, speed-reads yet more baby books, double-checks every phone number in his address book so that he'll remember who to call when it all starts, rushes around muttering like the White Rabbit and wringing his hands a lot. _Can't be good for his blood pressure,_ thinks Pete, who is by contrast feeling weirdly serene; and when Patrick is repacking the hospital bag for the fortieth time, Pete tugs him down onto the bed and makes him put his head on Pete's chest, his hand on Pete's stomach, and they just breathe for a few minutes while the baby moves a little under Patrick's hand.

He invites Ryan Ross and Brendon Urie to come spend the holidays at Casa Pete&Patrick&babybabybaby, hoping it'll distract Patrick from the complete nervous breakdown he's working on. Pete's mom brings over way too much food, and Pete celebrates the holiday in fine drama-queen style by clumping around moaning about his aches and pains and making everyone bring him things.

"Good," he says happily when Christmas Day is past and gone, "I guess we're not dealing with the Second Coming of Christ here, at least."

Brendon snickers. "You said coming."

"The Antichrist might be more likely," says Ryan, draping tinsel over Pete's giant belly. He's wearing a leafy crown-wreath-garland thing in his curly mop of hair (it looks like holly, which Pete thinks must hurt, but Ryan may be too stoned to notice) in honor of the Yule or something. "I mean, this IS Pete we're talking."

"MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH," Brendon intones solemnly, and then, "you're right, Ross, fits to a tee."

"You calling my baby an abomination?"

"Well," says Brendon, grinning. "I mean, you _did_ just kinda pull it out of your ass, didn't you -"

Pete winces violently while Patrick jams a Christmas stocking down over Brendon's head and Ryan says, "Nice choice of phrasing, Bren. God almighty."

-

Pete can't remember the last time that he didn't go out for New Year's Eve. But with his belly the size it is, there is no way that he's dragging it anywhere except the carpet in front of Patrick's fireplace, where he's currently lying on his back.

"I am a beached whale," he moans, waving his arms and legs feebly up into the air around the mound of his eight-month stomach.

"I was thinking more like a turtle flipped over on its back," says Patrick heartlessly, taking another sip of fake champagne. "Hey, hold still a sec," and he grabs for the digital camera on the coffee table - they'd been taking pictures of Gerard's mural earlier ("in case baby burns down the nursery someday," said Pete).

"Laugh it up," says Pete darkly as Patrick takes a couple of pictures, grinning. "I'm gonna get you back when I'm not a whale-turtle-human-beachball-thing anymore."

But Patrick's lining up the next shot with more care, face focused. _Click. Click. Click._

"For a whale-turtle-human-beachball-thing, you're looking pretty good. Glowing, and all," he says at length, showing Pete the camera screen. Pete's face, the firelight turning his skin to warm gold. The curvature of Pete's stomach, now absurdly large on his small frame. Pete in profile, brow and throat and baby bump silhouetted dark against the flames. In spite of himself, Pete smiles at the picture, and Patrick adds, "Better cross our fingers that baby gets _your_ looks, right?"

Pete shakes his head minutely, unfooled as usual by the attempt at lightness. "Shut the fuck up with that, Stump," he says, grabbing the camera and turning it on Patrick, ignoring the face Patrick makes. "I hope baby is gorgeous like you," _click,_ "I hope baby is talented like you," _click,_ "I hope baby is stubborn and funny and a tiny little mad scientist musical genius like you," _click click click..._

Patrick rolls his eyes, not believing, but he's blushing in the firelight.

"Baby will be fucking extraordinary and fucking stunning and fucking perfect," continues Pete, "because you're -"

But he doesn't get the chance to finish, because his entire midsection seizes up hard and tight, like an enormous hand is squeezing powerfully around his torso. For several seconds it's like nothing he's ever felt before: a dark wash in front of his eyes and an ancient, brutal pain. Then the great clench lets him go, for the moment, and Pete realizes instantly and with absolute clarity that everything he's come through so far, that was just the warm-up. This is the real thing. 

He's short of breath, and his heart is pounding, but he feels oddly _alive._ And he's got two distinct semi-inane thoughts in his head: 

_This is so unfair, I had a whole month left, the countdown wasn't finished. Not cool, Houston, not cool_

and 

_Wow, to hell with all the books, the research, the advice, the doctors, the god damn Lamaze. I don't think anything on earth could prepare you for this shit._

 

**JANUARY: t minus 1 month**

"Because I'm what?" says Patrick lightly, and then he looks up.

Pete's face is as white as paper. "Patrick," he says. "Patrick, I think -"

"What?" says Patrick, and then, "oh. Oh shit. Oh _shit."_

-

The sky is loud with firecrackers and gunshots; the streets are full of laughing drunks, honking horns, party hats, sloppy kisses, and the general pandemonium that rings in the new year.

In the backseat of the taxi, Patrick cradles Pete's head on his lap as sweat rolls in great drops down Pete's clammy temples. Unguarded in pain, his face is more weirdly beautiful than ever, dark crescents of eyelashes on china-pale cheeks, and Patrick is fucking terrified.

"Doing okay, man?" he whispers, the words sounding useless and stupid to his own ears.

Pete grimaces as he's wracked by another wave of contractions, says in a small voice, "I really wish I could've brought Hemmy along," and in the light of the fireworks overhead, his eyes are ghostly.

-

They do make it to the hospital, thank god: no chestburster baby in the cab, at least. There Pete is rushed to surgery - like really _rushed_ ; Patrick has never gotten such speedy medical attention in his life - with Patrick by his side. 

In the operating room they meet their surgeon, Dr. Secter. Or, more accurately, Patrick corners her and makes her swear on pain of death that she'll never, ever tell anyone about any of this, while the poor harried woman - who looks flustered enough to be dealing with this particular case, let alone deranged boyfriends into the bargain - protests that no one would believe her if she did, anyway. Pete alternately laughs and remonstrates ("Patrick, man, c'mon, I don't think a hand on the Bible is really necessary. Or a blood oath. Dude, put the scalpel down!") until _clench_ goes his body again, and the breath is forced from his lungs.

"Is he gonna be okay?" Patrick asks the surgeon in a low voice. His own stomach is knotting up too: sympathetic pains, maybe, or just plain fear. 

Dr. Secter exhales hard, and Patrick can tell that she is so, so nervous, professional or no. "I'm going to be completely honest with you, Mr. Stump. The primary operation, the 'childbirth' part, is actually relatively doable. It's the aftermath of the birth, the subsequent removal of the placenta and all -" (god, Patrick wishes he doesn't know what that meant; unfortunately, thanks to all those pregnancy books, he does) "- that poses the real danger, due to Mr. Wentz's lack of a proper uterus." She looks sidelong at Pete as if it were his fault; Pete grumbles under his breath, only loud enough for Patrick to hear, "Oh I'm sorry, ma'am, lemme get right on that."

Patrick touches his shoulder and he quiets.

"There's a significant risk of hemorrhage and/or organ failure, either of which are potentially fatal." Dr. Secter's voice is quiet, and she won't meet their eyes. "Given the circumstances, I'd - I'd like to know your wishes ahead of time. Whose survival would you prefer that we prioritize: that of Mr. Wentz, or that of the fetus?"

The bottom drops out of Patrick's stomach, but he says flatly, "Can you repeat yourself, please, I don't think I understand." 

She sighs, looks them both in the eyes for the first time. "If it comes down to the choice, do you want me to try to save Pete's life first, or the baby's?" And there it is, in stark, ugly words. 

"Pete," says Patrick, at the same time as Pete says, "Baby."

They look at each other and say, "Fuck no," again at exactly the same time.

"Patrick, I know, I know, but. It's my body," Pete insists, looking as stubborn as he did at the doctor's eight months ago. _"My_ life and my decision." And to Dr. Secter: "Listen. Whatever else happens, I want you to get baby out safe."

He winces against another onslaught of contractions. 

It should be ridiculous, as melodramatic as a soap opera, but Pete's lips and knuckles are bloodless and Patrick has never felt less like laughing.

"Noted," says Dr. Secter, voice wavering just a fraction, and Patrick has to turn his head aside to hide the tears pricking suddenly at the corners of his eyes.

-

They put Pete under for surgery. Way, way under, because, well - they call it a "modified Caesarean section," but that doesn't fool Patrick as to what's really going on. They're going to cut Pete open.

Patrick had thought that the enormity of the situation had sunk in eight months ago already.

Apparently it hadn't.

He feels sick, the excitement of anticipation turning sour in his stomach. The big decision they'd made to keep the baby, and then all that planning and waiting, and the idea had barely even crossed his mind that something could go wrong. Not like _really_ wrong, anyway. That didn't - that hardly ever even _happened_ these days, did it?

 _But then,_ thinks Patrick, _men hardly ever get pregnant these days either, right? Ha ha._

_Shit, shit, shit._

-

After fifteen minutes spent in one of the waiting rooms trying and failing to read _Better Homes and Gardens_ (why do hospitals always have such shitty magazine selections anyway?), Patrick can't take the sitting still anymore. Instead he walks around until he can get reception on his cell, and proceeds to call maybe thirty people in a row to share the news, such as it is. _Yeah, he went into labor tonight, a month premature. Um. He's in surgery right now. They're saying it might be pretty - pretty risky._

Said people begin to trickle into the waiting room like fifteen minutes later - jesus, Joe must have driven like a _maverick_ from downtown - and by the time they've been operating on Pete for about four hours, there are way more than thirty people there; people crammed into and spilling out of that little lounge, talking in low voices and calling up yet _more_ people and reading books they brought along and drinking cup after cup of shitty free coffee, watching and waiting through the night. 

That part of Patrick's mind that thinks about stupid inconsequential things in the gravest of moments, it's wondering how they're ever gonna manage to keep this one out of the tabloids.

\- 

Six hours, seven, eight.

Patrick's no medical expert - maybe that's not necessarily a bad sign? - but each minute feels heavier with dread regardless. He's finding it harder and harder to sit still or talk to anyone. That nightmare sense of cold, surreal horror is creeping up on him, stronger every second, and he's almost unsurprised when a nurse comes out of the operating room. 

It's this exhausted-looking guy with scruffy red hair and a day's growth of stubble and god, _no,_ the look on his face.

"We're doing all we can, but his body's just not designed to withstand the stress of carrying children -"

Patrick doesn't even have to hear "massive hemorrhage" and "moved to the ICU" to know that things have gone wrong. It's in the air all around him, grating as a scratched record or the shriek of mic feedback, wrongwrong _wrong,_ "blood transfusions" and "fighting for lives" and the words sound off-key, out of tune, _no_ and _god_ and _Pete, fuck, Pete_ scraping right on down to the bone.

He can't sit at all anymore, couldn't sit if you tied him down. Instead he paces the still, sterile hallways, ashen-faced, sick with fear. That sour taste of eight months ago is in his mouth again. For exactly the opposite reason this time, how about that? That probably counts as irony or something. Pete would know. Patrick was never any good at English.

_(Pete.)_

Up the corridor, down the corridor, and the fluorescent lighting make the people he passes look dead already, waxy and yellowed. Somewhere off in the distance there's a fly buzzing against a window. This poet Pete liked, he can't remember who - and why is he thinking about high school English at a time like this? - had written this thing, Patrick remembers the first line: _I heard a fly buzz when I died._ Fuck, he doesn't want to keeping thinking about _death_ , has this irrational idea that it'll jinx them or something; but he does anyway, he can't get his mind away from it. 

Patrick presses his forehead to the outer doors of the Intensive Care Unit, cold white, and knows that the worst part of all is his own helplessness. It's the same way he felt years ago after Pete overdosed; waiting in the hospital while they tried to save Pete's life, Patrick had thought to himself that he'd much prefer physical torture to the agony of being unable to _do_ anything.

Nine hours and Patrick hits walls. He hits soda machines. He hits Andy and Joe when they try to come and retrieve him. Hard, not pulling his punches. His friends glance at each other, and in their eyes he can see they're scared, and not just for Pete or the baby; no, they're scared that Patrick will go and do something stupid. 

_You don't need to worry about that, guys,_ he thinks with an awful mirthless laugh welling up silently, hollowly, in his throat. _That's more Pete's department, isn't it, right there. Taking such stupid fucking risks, thinking he's indestructible. I knew it, I warned him, I *knew* something would go wrong, but does Pete Wentz ever listen? And if it all ends with him giving his stupid fucking life up for a fucking kid - it's so completely Pete, he'd love it, the perfect fucking irony of dying because you *love* too hard_ \- and he kicks the corner of a low end table, sending dull reverberations of pain from his toes up to his knee. Normally Patrick would curse at that, maybe yell a little, but instead he's suddenly reminded of the baby-proofing that they'd meticulously applied to all those sharp corners so that baby wouldn't get hurt; and then he can only slump against the table and cover his face with his hands.

-

The waiting room looks like a Pete Wentz Life Reunion or something. If the circumstances were different, everyone would be having a really enjoyable catch-up time. The Wentz and Stump families are there, of course, and after that it's a motley collection of what looks to Patrick like damn near everyone Pete's ever met: friends old and new, labelmates and musical collaborators, business acquaintances, more than one A-list celebrity, and a parade of exes (Patrick even thinks he might have caught a glimpse of Jeanae, wrapped in a giant car coat and exiting the bathroom with red-rimmed eyes). Pete, apparently, has a hell of a lot of people who care about him.

The atmosphere is tense, jittery, fearful. Full of entreaties, spoken or unspoken. Patrick, an unbeliever himself, has never thought of his acquaintanceship as particularly religious, but just a quick glance around the huddled groups in the waiting room shows rosary beads dangling from Frank Iero's hand; right next to him, Ryan Ross turning a silver pentacle over and over in his long fingers; the soft sound of the _Shema Yisrael_ from one of the Trohmans; and even Brendon with eyes closed, hands folded, and face uplifted in an attitude of prayer that Patrick guesses is utterly unconscious, left over from younger days.

 _And Gabe's probably in a broom closet somewhere communing with the Cobra,_ Patrick thinks irreverently, and then is surprised and a bit ashamed that he's able to find anything funny at a time like this.

-

Nearly ten hours since they first rolled Pete into surgery. Though he's been up for well over 24 hours now, Patrick isn't even registering physical tiredness at this point. Or much of anything else. He's worn himself out with all the motion and is huddled dully into a chair next to Joe, drained, desperate. Waiting.

When the haggard-looking surgeon finally appears in the doorway, Pete's mom gives a little cry and Patrick has to close his eyes and will himself not to pass out, because there is red red red _everywhere._ Intellectually he'd known already that 'hemorrhage' meant blood, way too much blood, but no theoretical knowledge could have prepared him for the reality. Dr. Secter's gloves are soaked, smock spattered, _Pete's blood, the baby's too, maybe, *my* blood in its own veins, oh god, god._

He wants to grab the woman and shake her by the shoulders and yell _Is he all right, is the kid he fought for all right, tell me,_ but he's frozen to the spot like in a nightmare, and the words stick in his throat. Dreamlike, too, everything's in slow motion. Every breath takes eons, millennia, whole eternities of suspended silence.

Dr. Secter opens her mouth.

Patrick sees the smile start around her weary eyes just as the first loud wail breaks from the ICU.

-

The next thing Patrick hears is a sound like a gust of wind, a hundred unison sighs of relief. That breaks the spell, and the room bursts into noise and color and motion: cue people cheering and clapping, people dropping their coffee cups, people sagging back in their chairs, people giggling and tearing up and already chattering in that buzzed post-crisis way, people falling asleep where they sit after the long hours of vigil they've kept. Patrick does not cheer, or laugh, or speak, or sleep. Patrick moves on automatic across the lounge and through the doors of the ICU, breaking six different hospital rules in the process. Later he won't remember making that short walk at all; the journey seems as instantaneous as teleportation.

The red-haired nurse ("Dobman," according to his nametag) doesn't stop him, though; he just smiles at Patrick and lets it slide, like standard operating procedure can be bent a little for a case as...irregular as this one. The guy's entire demeanor is different from that of three hours ago: drained, yeah, but utterly exhilarated. "Come on in, Mr. Stump, we're just wrapping up here," and he leads Patrick through another set of swinging doors. 

The ICU smells really pretty gross, but Patrick could give a fuck. His attention goes straight to Pete, who's in the bed, swathed in white sheets, looking incredibly small; Pete, who's bandaged from chest to hips, hooked up to a dozen monitors and IVs; Pete, who's unconscious but _alive,_ the pillowcase fluttering with the in-and-out of his breath. He looks like hell - worse than Patrick's ever seen him, even after he's been down with food poisoning or awake for a week straight on tour or just had a bottle of Ativan pumped out of his stomach. But Patrick could give a fuck about that, too; he just stares at Pete, and feels the way a guy who's just been pardoned from death row must feel.

"Mr. Wentz's anesthetic should be wearing off in a half hour or so," says Nurse Dobman. "But in the meantime, would you like to hold your daughter? They're just getting her cleaned up now."

 _Daughter,_ thinks Patrick, _oh my god,_ and has to fight faintness for the second time that day. 

As it is he stumbles a little, and is grateful for the chair conveniently located at the bedside. Once he's quite sure that he's not going to collapse bodily onto the linoleum, he nods mutely in response. The nurse ducks into the next room, Patrick's pounding heart counting out the beats of his absence.

Dobman returns carrying a mewling, squirming bundle of blankets, and hands it over, and Patrick finds his arms abruptly occupied by five pounds of daughter.

She has a little squashed-looking head and little swollen eyelids and little fisted hands and she's the best thing Patrick's ever seen, and right now he feels like a guy who's just been pardoned from death row _and_ won the lottery. And been elected president. Of the world.

-

Pete's stirring already - figures, he's half immune to anesthesia after all those years of drugstore-cowboyism - but Patrick is kind of distracted by the important task of running his finger over the fragile shell of baby's ear, over and over again. _Music,_ he thinks, _I get to introduce her to *all of it*._

And then _Hey, the fuck, Stump, why are you fucking *crying* when everything turned out fine?_ and then _oh whatever, Pete probably will too,_ and then _it's not every day you have a kid, after all_. And then _I have a kid I have a kid I have a *kid*_ , and he can't help it, he starts laughing out loud right through the tears.

He hears the rustle of sheets and a little Pete-ish noise, sees the blanketed form in the bed go stock-still for a split second; then Pete sits up so fast that Patrick's amazed his spine doesn't snap. "Baby where's baby _is my baby okay?"_

"Hey, chill, Wentz," says Patrick with utterly inappropriate levity - he's near-giddy by now, a reaction to the sudden easing of all his dread. "You did great, dude. The baby's fine."

But Pete's eyes have already dropped to the little bundle in Patrick's arms, already fastened on the slight but noticeable movement there. He takes a great breath in, out, then says in a voice that only trembles a little, "So. Do we have a two-headed space alien or what?"

"One head, two eyes, ten fingers, ten toes. Although after this whole night, shit - I don't know if I'd've really minded an extra limb or two, not if you were both okay."

A faint tinge of color is coming back to Pete's skin. "Fuck, _I_ was prepared to accept like, scales and horns and tentacles if I had to. Good. So. Was I right? He or she?"

"Guess!" says Patrick, and wow, he really _is_ stupid with relief. But Pete just looks at him, his gaze dark and steady and so intense that Patrick has to fight the urge to look away, and says, "Tell me, 'Trick."

Patrick just - he doesn't know if he can. He doesn't have words, not proper words of his own, not for something like this. Except hey, he knows someone who does. 

So he quotes softly, _"Baby girl with eyes the size of baby worlds,"_ and the look on Pete's face - his _face._ Forget the lottery or whatever, the smile that's breaking over Pete's whole face is like the _sun_ rising. 

He doesn't look like hell anymore. He looks fucking radiant.

He catches Patrick's hand in his own, just briefly but so hard it hurts. Then he pulls the blanket back with minutely shaking fingers to look at the baby. _(The baby?_ thinks Patrick, who suddenly has no idea how to mentally refer to the small person in front of him. _Name, yeah, we're gonna need one of those._ )

Pete, because he is a jackass, pokes at his daughter's red, wrinkled face and giggles. "She looks like you when you're mad."

Patrick laughs, too, still a little shakily, "Wow, fuck you," and flips him off; he's got that dizzy delight buzzing right on down to his toes by now. 

"Hey, language!" says Pete. "Not in front of the baby!" But his half-assed attempt at a scandalized look is no match for the giant grin that won't come off his face as he looks down at his daughter.

 

**CONCLUSION: liftoff!!!**

"- Name?" Pete blinks up, confused, at the patient-looking lady in charge of birth certificates and all the official forms and stuff. He's still a little sedated and to be honest he's been thinking of the kid as _babybabybaby_ all along, and now that they actually have to pick a name - a real name! for a real _person!_ \- he's kind of thrown for a loop. 

Patrick whispers in his ear.

"Right, oh, right," says Pete, cuddling his little bundle close. "Okay, okay, for a girl we decided on something in honor of our fake, um, babymama. And real friend." He kisses Ashlee's cheek. "To the one and only Ashlee Nicole Simpson: as a token of gratitude for taking the heat and saving our asses and pretending to get _fat_ for our sake" - scattered applause and laughter in the knot of people pressed around him - "we're naming her Nicole." 

"N-I-C-O-L-E? Okay, great," says Birth Certificate Lady, scribbling away. "Middle name?"

"Oh, shit, middle name," says Patrick. "Pete, what -"

"No, this one I totally remember. I was talking with Mikeyway last week, and it totally just came to me." Pete is grinning. "I want it to be - if it's okay with you, Patrick -"

"You could've died, dude, I think you get to pick her middle name." Patrick hesitates, then adds, "Even if it's from _The Nightmare Before Christmas._ I guess."

Pete kisses him on the cheek too, loud and smacking. "Nah," and to Birth Certificate Lady, "You can put down H-E-L-E-N-A." He winks at the brothers Way. Gerard looks touched to the point of tears, and even Mikey nearly cracks a smile.

Nicole Helena it is, then.

(Andy is tremendously pleased when, later, he finds out that her first name means some shit like "victory of the people" and her middle name has something to do with "torchlight" or "torchbearing" or god knows what.)

"Born in blood, your miracle daughter will bring the revolution!" he says, raising victorious arms. There's a slightly maniacal glint in his eye. Pete prudently decides not to say anything to the contrary.

"Right _on,_ man," says Ryan Ross, who has just returned from celebrating "mom and baby's safe passage" with forty-five minutes of toking up behind the dumpsters in the company of Joe, Travis, Mikey Way, and the entirety of his own band. 

Joe just tells them, "Should have gone with Wumph, kids. Should have gone with Wumph."

"That was our choice for a boy."

"Really?"

"No.")

-

They keep Pete at the hospital for six whole days, for "observation" (which really means _While we try to figure out how the fuck you managed this shit,_ Pete figures). But finally he's reluctantly released, minus a good deal of blood, plus one baby girl wearing a tiny ID bracelet that says _Nicole Helena Stump-Wentz._ Patrick wraps her up and carries her out in the sea-green baby blanket Pete made. It's maybe a little lopsided, but it'll keep her warm.

It's the first week of 2010 ("New Year's kid! I won't have to worry about forgetting her birthday," says Patrick gleefully, "nice timing, Wentz") when they bring little Nicole home. The morning is cold and gray and inauspicious-looking, but the first snowdrops are poking their little heads up from the earth, and Pete sniffles a bit when he and Patrick and baby enter the house all together for the first time.

He commemorates the event 21st-century style: by updating his Buzznet. The picture is a beautiful black & white Tom Conrad shot of Nicole at one week old. She's all downy cheeks and tiny hands, sleep-scrunched eyes and fleecy swaddling; like a true child of P. Stump, she is curled up against the smooth side of an acoustic guitar, and like a true child of P. Wentz, she is staring straight into the camera with a slight pout and big black-fringed eyes.

_introducing my new favorite person. nicole helena aka little saint nic aka sally aka beachball aka wee wentzy aka shooting star aka babybabybaby aka my daughter_

That entry hits a new comment record.

Pete doesn't have time to read them, though; he's too busy calling his mom eighty times a day, asking if it's okay for Nic to sleep on her stomach and what temperature they should be keeping the nursery at and whether having a teddy bear in her crib poses the risk of smothering and _oh by the way, Mom, how do you go about trimming a baby's toenails anyway?_

("Careful," he hisses, watching between his fingers as Patrick snips gingerly away with the miniature scissors, "careful!"

"...aaaaaand done." Patrick drops the scissors.

Pete takes his hands away from his face. "No blood or anything?"

"No blood or anything," Patrick confirms.

Pete breaths a sigh of relief. "Good. God, I am so scared of wrecking this baby."

Patrick laughs, says, "Pete, dude. You're not gonna wreck anything.")

-

Like Pete, little Nicole is constantly in motion and has a predilection for making comical faces; but she has Patrick's fair, clear skin and round cheeks, and though her newborn eyes are blue, soon they turn to a deep, dark hazel brown. When her hair starts coming in (Patrick had spent the first few weeks worried that she'd inherited male pattern baldness, or something, and Pete had laughed at him because that made no sense), it's like neither dad's, darkish with a red gloss to it. She's very small still - she was, after all, a full month premature - but bright-eyed and healthy and gorgeous, and Pete doesn't think he'll ever stop spamming the online world with endless baby pictures. 

He almost wants her to stay this way forever: she's so completely perfect just the way she is, fuzzy cheeks and creased wrists and eensy little fingernails and all. But if Pete's learned anything in thirty years, it's that all children have to grow up sometime. And he wants that for her, too. Wants her to be two years old and batting at Joe's brightly colored tattoos, to be three and singing along with Patrick's records in a little lisping voice, four and listening intently as Andy feeds her organic smoothies and explains the Communist Manifesto in words of one syllable, five and chasing Hemmy around the living room trailing her green blanket behind her. Which she already refuses to let out of her sight, incidentally. Pete is very proud about that. 

-

Nic sleeps hard and mostly only cries when there's actually something wrong. In general she's a surprisingly easy-going baby (especially, says Patrick, when you consider that she IS Pete Wentz's kid). This is helpful during the period of adjustment in which Pete and Patrick both come to appreciate their own moms and dads a hell of a lot more once they realize that parenting is _a fuckton of work,_ holy shit. 

"Having a kid," Pete says, flopping bonelessly onto the couch at the end of another draining day, "is nothing, _nothing_ like having a dog."

Some things they're already used to. The usual infant mess of spit-up and diapers, for instance, doesn't seem all that bad when you've toured the country packed inside a van with three other twentysomething guys. Likewise, the sobs and howls of a crying baby are nothing compared to years' worth of deafenings at the hands of screechy microphones, too-loud amps, and (worse than either) screaming teenage girls.

Other things take longer. They have this great big fight the first time Pete absentmindedly tests the temperature of Nicole's bottle on his hand instead of the inside of his wrist: the formula is too hot, Nic cries because it hurts, and Patrick shouts at Pete half the night. Which is kind of unnecessary because Pete already feels worse about burning her little tongue than he has about anything since, oh, taking those pictures of his dick. He doesn't make that mistake again, mostly because Patrick usurps the baby-feeding duties himself. Pete still handles most of the night feedings, though, because "I'm insomniac either way, but my Patrick needs his beauty sleep." This would work out very conveniently if Patrick weren't constantly worrying about sudden infant death syndrome and waking up fifty times a night to run to Nic's crib and make sure that she's breathing. 

When the circles under his eyes start getting kind of dark, Patrick's mom takes pity on them and gives them a baby monitor. This does not stop Patrick's compulsive night checkups, though he does manage to get them down to only about five per night.

Pete kind of suspects that Patrick maybe just wants to go look at her anyway.

-

_No ofense Pete but is your baby seriously Ashlee Simpsons too, cuz she doesn't look like ashlee at ALL. Were did she REALLY come from? I think u should be honest with you're fans._  
 **asked by curiousgeorge on January 29, 2010**

 

_she sprang fully formed from her fathers forehead._  
 **answered by pete on January 30, 2010**

-

"PatrickPatrickPatrick," Pete yells up the stairs. "Do you think it's okay to put Sharpie on baby fingernails?"

"I bet there are toxins or something," Patrick's voice comes back to him, and Pete can picture him, concernedly eyeing Nicole's peach-soft skin. "Uh, what about those markers Ryan left here the other week? They're supposed to be childsafe, I think."

"Oh hey, good call. Where'd they go again?" says Pete, and then, "Waitnevermind." He bounds up the stairs, wielding a black Magic Marker. "Gimme," he says gleefully, reaching for Nicole, who's sitting in Patrick's lap making babbly noises and waving her little hands around. "My baby is gonna be the baddest baby in Chicago."

"Do it fast," says Patrick, grudgingly handing his daughter over. "We have to leave soon."

In honor of Nicole turning one month old, her proud parents are bringing her along to the smallish private afterparty of a Cobra/TAI... show down at House of Blues. "Yeah, just briefly, just long enough to see everyone," Pete assures Patrick. (What he means _just long enough to show her off to everyone,_ of course.)

Within their first five minutes at the party, Pete's head is actually ringing and spinning from all the loud squeals and camera flashes. Nic handles it like a pro, though, looking around with big bright eyes and patiently tolerating an endless amount of poking, pinching, and prodding. Bill Beckett plays peek-a-boo and pattycake with her while mocking Pete about her outfit, which is emblazoned head to toe with (teeny, tiny, baby-size) Clan logos. "Making a corporate whore out of her already? Tsk."

"Well, y'know," interrupts Gabe, shrugging. "She IS Pete Wentz's kid."

"Why does everyone keep saying that?" Pete complains.

"So, Patrick, Patrick Stump. When are you gonna make an honest woman out of Pete here?" Travis calls from the bar. Patrick flushes and fidgets and says, "Um," while Pete laughs and cracks a couple of shotgun-wedding jokes and thinks privately that he wouldn't be totally averse to the idea, maybe, someday, after it's legalized and after FOB is mostly out of the limelight and after they've managed to live together for a few years without killing each other. He kind of likes the idea of Patrick being officially stuck with him forever.

"Wentz would be a beautiful blushing bride for sure," says Jon Walker, loping up with a grin. "Hey, Patrick, how you doing."

"Uh, little tired, but I'm pretty good." Patrick still looks a bit flustered. "I didn't know you were back in town."

"Better believe it. There's _cash_ involved," Jon says, and waggles a wad of bills at the assembly. "Ladies and gentlemen! If you bet that the kid'd be a girl, come on out back in five and collect on it. Oooooor put your winnings right back into the pool, whichever, 'cause we're already taking bets on her first word!"

"I don't even have to bet," Gabe informs him. "I already know, dude: it's gonna be NO."

 _"...and this little piggy cried wee-wee-wee-wee all the way home._ Seconding that," says Bill. "I mean, man, considering her role model IS Pete Wentz..."

"Oh for fuck's sake."

-

Ashlee is there for no good reason whatsoever - she got kind of into the whole pop-punk thing when she dated Pete, and apparently it stuck - and she's chatting with VickyT and another girl in the corner. Pete sidles up from behind with Nicole in his arms and sings off-key in her ear, "Look around the world, pretty baby -"

Ashlee turns and sees Nic; she says something like, "Agheeeeeohmygod!" and grins that great big foolish grin that people get within ten feet of an baby. "Can I hold her can I hold her?"

Pete hands the baby over (gingerly, it's true, but he's still progressed further than Patrick, who is as yet literally incapable of transferring Nic from his own arms to somebody else's), and Ashlee takes her and holds her with practiced ease, cupping the small downy head gently in her hand.

"Oh, Pete," she says, eyes bright, "oh my goodness, she's beautiful. I only wish she really _were_ mine -"

Nic reaches up a tiny hand, unsteady as a drunk's, and yanks on Ashlee's long hair. Hard.

"- but she is obviously you guys', for sure," Ashlee finishes, laughing and wincing at the same time as she tries to disentangle the little fingers. "Ow."

Pete winks at her. "The blogosphere doesn't know it, though. You really pulled this one off, Ash."

"I know, right?" Ashlee hands Nicole back to him before reaching into her purse and producing a glossy clipping: _...Simpson has stated that - contrary to earlier reports - her ex-boyfriend and baby's father, Fall Out Boy bassist Pete Wentz, is assuming primary care and custody of the child..._ "Now you just have to make sure to lend her to me every once in awhile so that we can get photographed out in public together, and we'll be golden. At least for the first few years -"

"And then someone will figure it out," says Pete, "there'll be this big-ass scandal -"

"Massive," Ashlee agrees, and they share a commiserating grin. "It'll be terrible. - Oh, hey! Fuck, where are my manners? I have to introduce you to somebody special -"

She motions to the pretty, curly-haired, olive-skinned woman who's standing between her and VickyT; the woman slips her hand into Ashlee's and they smile at each other.

"Speaking of scandals," she says with that little smirk of hers, "here's the reason why Daddy was _totally fine_ with me covering for you guys, even out of wedlock and in full view of the media and everything. You see, most babies are conceived, like...heterosexually." 

Pete doesn't follow. He raises his eyebrows in a question, and now Ashlee is full-out grinning as she says, "Pete, I'd like you to meet my girlfriend."

-

Patrick's jaw drops incredulously when Pete tells him. "No way, you're shitting me."

"Yes way. And she's got it bad, too," says Pete. "She says - no, wait, get this - she says that someday they're gonna run off and get married in Mexico City, and when her dad has a shitfit, she's gonna throw it in his face how well Jessica's perfect straight marriage turned out."

Patrick just shakes his head, still laughing as he photocopies yet another ultrasound. Pete, the eternal entrepreneur, is letting a couple of big names from Yale - or if you want the whole mouthful, from the Yale School of Medicine's Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences - collaborate with Dr. Bacal to write up his one-of-a-kind case for the medical journals. All real names and identifying details changed, naturally. Expected to shock and astound the scientific community, blah blah blah, and it doesn't hurt that Pete's making a tidy sum of money off the whole business. 

(Though not nearly as much, Pete's accountant points out, as he could have made by selling the story to the tabloids. 

"It'd be too much like selling _her,"_ Pete responds simply. "And I don't ever want to do that.")

Lest he get bored between collating information to send off to the research team and flipping out with excitement every time baby Nicole comes up with a new facial expression _and_ trying to get all his usual label stuff and business stuff and music stuff and publicity stuff done too, there's always the gym. For the first time in his life he has to work - and work _hard_ \- to get his body back in shape, and he suspects Patrick of the occasional touch of now-you-know-what-it's-like-prettyboy schadenfreude about the whole matter, though Patrick very kindly says nothing at all.

Even after the reemergence of the smooth, flat abdominal muscles he's accustomed to, Pete spends way too much time scrutinizing his shirtless body in the mirror, poking at the faint, silvery lines that remain. 

"Those are gonna be a bitch to edit out for photoshoots," he tells his reflection disapprovingly.

Patrick, sitting on the bed tugging his socks off, says, "You should be glad, dude, at least you escaped varicose veins. My mom bitched about those for _years._ In fact she still brings 'em up whenever she needs a good guilt trip, all 'I turned my thighs into purple spiderwebs for you, the least you could do is call -'"

Pete laughs. "Better practice," he says, turning back to the mirror and berating an imaginary Nicole, "I nearly bled to death for you, young lady, the least you could do is take out the trash."

The real Nicole looks up inquiringly from her playpen. Patrick, down to boxers and t-shirt, hauls her out and tells her, sing-song, "Bathtime for baby!"

"Good luck with that," says Pete, collapsing onto the bed with a thump. The last time _he'd_ had attempted to bathe his daughter, he'd ended up the more drenched of the two. 

"You going to sleep?"

Pete motions toward his laptop. "Nah, first I have to send around another email! What Baby Did Today."

"Didn't you already write one this morning? When she kicked you in the face during changing time?"

"...well yeah, but she's done a _whole bunch of new stuff_ since then."

-

Most days, by the time they've finally gotten Nic down for the night, Pete and Patrick are both too tired to cook. So instead they're standing at the kitchen counter at ten p.m., making sandwiches and playing a game that Pete calls WHAT DO WE DO WHEN. It's been an unfailing source of entertainment since they became parents.

"What do we do when she hears curse words on Fall Out Boy records?" Patrick's seated on the counter and dangling his legs off the side. They don't touch the ground. "And starts using them at, like, kindergarten?"

"Oh whatever, we never even drop the f-bomb or anything. Her teachers'll just have to suck it up." Pete swipes jelly across a piece of bread. "What about when people start asking about the hyphenated last name and why it, y'know, _isn't_ Wentz-Simpson?"

"She can tell them she was actually raised by wolves." Patrick holds up his own peanut-buttered slice, motioning, and Pete squooshes them together with a grin. "What about the day when some kid at school tells her there are pictures of dad's private parts all over the internet?" 

Pete, making a bit of a face at this scenario, digs into the bag for more bread and repeats the assembly line with Patrick.

"Well she'll google them, obviously," he says, sticking a finger into the jar of peanut butter and then trying to get it into Patrick's mouth, "freak out and become a lesbian instead -"

"I don't think that's how it works -"

"- and then I won't have to bust my ass chasing the boys off with my machete," Pete finishes triumphantly, bumping his fingertip against Patrick's bottom lip. "Open up, dude."

"You don't have a machete." Patrick wrinkles his nose. "And ew, no."

"I could have a machete." (Vague sound of disagreement.) "Come on, like you didn't lick _jizz_ off my _stomach_ last night." 

"You are so romantic," says Patrick, but sucks Pete's peanut-butter-sticky finger into his mouth anyway. Pete smirks in victory, dreams of machetes still dancing in his head, for about five seconds...until Patrick glances up at him through that fan of pale eyelashes, lips and tongue working warm and wet around his knuckles. 

Pete hastily pulls out again, shivering a bit at the thick _pop_ it makes. Patrick smirks at _him_ and takes a bite of PB &J, humming in pleasure at the taste.

Pete bites into his own sandwich, leans in, rubs his nose against Patrick's. "Patrick Stump," he says with his mouth full, "you are the peanut butter to my jelly," and they smile cross-eyed at each other.

-

At first they're ridiculously nervous about trusting Nicole to babysitters - even their own moms, who would be more than happy to spend six hours with the brand-new granddaughter - but then comes the Friday when oh, god, all they want is a long hot bath in a nice clean hotel room. And then maybe...other things. They haven't exactly had an uninterrupted night in quite a while. By this point they're all over each other constantly (even in front of baby, which Patrick says will probably leave her forever scarred on some therapist's couch) but they both really, really miss _it._ Miss it like crazy, the slick-sweet fusion of what Pete persists in calling "real sex."

"I did promise you a really good lay, didn't I," says Patrick. "Well..."

None of Nic's grandparents are available to take her at the moment, though, so eventually they cave and leave her in the unexpectedly capable hands of, yes, Brendon Urie, who's in Chicago for the weekend. Patrick's biting his lip as they pull away from the house, and Pete is damn thankful that he's got his Xanax back again. 

Patrick takes a Rite Aid detour on their way downtown and picks up a box of condoms. "Just in case," he tells Pete.

"What -"

"I am _so not ready_ for another kid."

"...You don't think - again? Seriously? No way in _hell."_

_"Just in motherfucking case."_

-

They get a suite at the Hilton, a bottle of red wine, a bubble bath, and no sleep whatsoever that night. Too busy with - well, a whole hell of a lot of sex, but what it really feels like is relearning each other.

Pete gets his really good lay, and then some. They have sex in the lamplight, spread out on top of the sheets, bared to each other; sex in the moonlight, out on the hotel balcony, laughing, careless of prying eyes. And in other, more creative places - rubbing up hard together under the brilliant shiver of the strobes in some club at two or three in the morning, Patrick just drunk enough not to care that they're in public, Pete getting off on the fact that anyone could be watching them. He likes to be seen, and to see, too; he's not lying when he tells Patrick, "I could look at you all day," arms and thighs and throat and mouth and that stupid hat in his bed. And then, too, there's the autoerotic thrill of seeing his own tattooed arms pressing Patrick down into the mattress under him, caging him there - watching his own hair brush dark across Patrick's skin, making Patrick giggle at the tickle or, depending on how far gone he is, shudder at the tease - staring at his own fingers disappearing into Patrick's body as he thrusts and curls them and Patrick cries out.

But he knows by now what Patrick likes, too. Patrick likes it best in the close-pressing darkness under layers and layers of covers, the air thick and hot around them, alive like its own creature; in their own hideaway, just theirs, private and secret for hot mouths and fumbling fingers. "Where you can't see a thing," Patrick whispers, rough breath in his ear, "where it doesn't make any difference if your eyes are open or closed. I like that. It means you've got no choice but to just...just lose yourself, Pete. All you can do is taste" (sweatsalt of Patrick's skin) "smell" (sharp animal scent of sex coming off him) "touch" (hard throb of Patrick's cock in the confines of Pete's fist, god, he's burning up) _"hear."_

Under their dark cavern of blankets the rhythm of heaving breath and flesh and greedy desire reaches its crescendo; Pete groans desperately and comes yet again, Patrick's voice honey-slow all around him.

-

When they're both too sex-exhausted to go again, seriously, they sort of curl around each other in a warm ball of afterglow (and gritty eyes and sticky limbs and damp sheets, but whatever). They doze a little as the first pale barely-light appears at the horizon.

Two hours later, in unspoken mutual consent, they dash straight home to baby. 

Baby is of course perfectly content, all bundled up and sitting out in the winter sunshine with Brendon, who's tossing out birdseed to some cardinals and singing the entirety of _Les Miserables_ straight through. But Pete is still overpowered by an incredible wash of relief when he gets her safely back in his arms.

The flip side of treasuring and protecting another human being is the acute consciousness of how much there is at stake, of the possibility of loss. This knowledge isn't new to Pete - fuck, he's felt this way about _Patrick_ almost as far back as they go - but he's startled how piercing-sharp when it comes to his own _kid._ All morning he stays in the nursery with Nicole, reading _The Giving Tree_ out loud and blowing raspberries on her tummy and promising her in a ridiculous dialect of baby-talk that he'll never leave her side ever again, _never ever ever, wentzybaby, nonono._

And from the way that Patrick pulls out a bunch of favorite records and spends all _afternoon_ educating Nicole in the wonders of Motown, Pete kinda figures he feels the same.

(Nic already has a favorite musical genre, actually: jazz, as gauged by her happy wriggling and almost-smiles when it comes on. 

"It's 'cause I sang it to you before you were born, that's why," Patrick croons as he rocks her to the soft strains of Diana Ross. And to Pete, "No matter how else she grows up, this kid is at least gonna appreciate good music."

"She'll probably rebel in junior high by listening to, like. The Pussycat Dolls."

"Oh, god, don't say that.")

Rash promises aside, Pete has to duck out to the grocery store for more Cinnamon Toast Crunch and baby formula that evening. He comes back to the house to find Patrick snuggled into the couch, holding, inexplicably, one of his hats in his lap. It's a big black fedora, turned upside down, and little Nicole is curled up bodily inside it.

"She couldn't seem to get to sleep in the crib," Patrick tells him sheepishly.

Pete squeaks involuntarily and says, "Where is my _camera?"_ and runs to find it (stopping only to kiss Patrick soundly on the mouth) and takes ten million more completely precious pictures for the edification of the internet-at-large.

"Just when I thought you'd become this total jaded rockstar and everything," Patrick comments, attempting to pry Nic out of the hat without waking her.

"It is impossible to be jaded about a baby," says Pete from behind the viewfinder, "especially a baby that's _yours,_ Patrick Stump." He clicks industriously away.

"And also yours," Patrick reminds him. "You better never bust out any of that 'Look what your kid did with the scissors' crap."

Pete pauses to meet Patrick's eyes over the top of the camera. "And also mine."

It's late by the time baby, and her dads, are finally down for the night. They can hear Nicole making soft sleepybaby sounds over the monitor. Patrick's steady breathing means he's just about to drop off, too, and Pete's not far behind.

"Originally," Patrick mumbles into his shoulder, "I thought there wasn't _anything_ that could be worth you taking such a giant risk in the first place, y'know? Anything in the world that could be worth that New Year's night."

"Yeah?"

Patrick says on a yawn, "Yeah. But I think. I think I was wrong," and sleeps.

-

The bartskull, as predicted, is never the same again.

But "it's all right," Pete tells Patrick with an air of noble stoicism, as he plays with Nicole's wee Magic-Markered toes; "it's a sacrifice I was willing to make."

"Just another thing you can use later. Leverage, right," says Patrick, trying and failing to get more formula into Nic's mouth than down her chin. "I ruined my ugly-ass tattoo for you, young lady, the least you could do is set the table..."

"Don't say ass in front of baby," Pete chides him.

"Ha, you just did."

"...dammit."

"Even worse!" Patrick crows, just before Nicole knocks at the bottle with one diminutive hand and somehow manages to upset most of its contents into Patrick's lap. 

Pete scoops her up and twirls her around the nursery. "You are totally on my side, aren'tcha honey, aren'tcha?" he coos, and she dimples and makes a bunch of random vowel sounds back at him. 

Patrick makes a huffy noise and bangs the bathroom door closed on Pete's uncharitable laughter. 

Pete nuzzles his face into Nic's fine, wispy hair, rocks her over his shoulder while he gazes around the enchanted wood. _No wishing on any stars this time,_ he thinks. _This thing, this kid thing, it's gonna be what we make it: me, and Patrick, and baby._

Pete knows he won't be a perfect parent, not even close. He knows he'll fuck up, probably on a frequent basis; he's just hoping that it won't be too badly, that he can make up the difference by working hard and loving harder. 

("At the very least," he'd said slowly to Patrick at the asscrack of dawn this morning, eating handfuls of cereal straight out of the box as Patrick heated up Nicole's 6 a.m. bottle, "I'm not gonna be one of those parents who lies and lies and lies to their kid about, like, the way the world is, and the mistakes they've made, and everything. Not if I can help it, 'Trick. I'm gonna be honest with her about the things I regret, _and_ the things I don't. Maybe then she can avoid some of that shit."

Patrick pulled his stocking cap further down over his cold ears, mumbled, "'S too damn early to hear your philosophy of parenting, Wentz." 

"Yeah, well, I woke up and couldn't fucking get back to sleep, so I just laid there for a couple hours and formulated this whole Grand Game Plan for Nicole's life. I hope you realize, Patrick, she's gonna be one kickass chick. The world won't know what hit it."

Patrick's eyes crinkled in a small smile. He tested the bottle carefully on the soft flesh of his inner wrist, nodded, and handed it off to Pete. 

"Just try not overthink it," he advised over his shoulder as he headed back toward their warm bed. "The greatest songs still come one note at a time, right?"

"Now who's being philosophical?"

"Go feed your kid, Pete.")

And he really _is_ hoping that Nicole can learn from the stupid things he's done, the stupid things he'll no doubt continue to do; hoping that she'll take something from his mistakes and awkwardness and bad fashion choices and embarrassing stories, that she'll end up better and smarter and stronger and kinder than her dad.

"Your dad Pete, that is," he clarifies to the baby in his arms. "Your dad Patrick, on the other hand - I don't think even _you_ can manage to be more incredible than _him,"_ and Nicole blinks intelligently at him with wide hazel eyes and blows spit bubbles like she totally knows what he's talking about.

In her face Pete can almost see the future stretched out before him like the family photo album on their mantelpiece, clean white pages waiting to be filled. 

He can hardly wait until she's is old enough to do - everything. 

To try piano, bass, drums, guitar (Pete hopes that she's good at at least one of them, because that would make Patrick happy; and he's not gonna lie, he also hopes that she's shitty at at least one of them, because that would kind of make _him_ happy). To learn every word of Patrick's hip-hop collection at an inappropriately early age, and probably disconcert her grandparents by informing them that bitches ain't shit, or something.

To trundle off to kindergarten, read _The Wind in the Willows_ and _Treasure Island_ and _The Hobbit_ and _Alice in Wonderland,_ have her first crush. To fight the man, dye her hair green, inform Pete that he is "laaaaaaaaaame, Dad, _so_ lame" and talk back to Patrick (who will sputter and get all red, and Pete will want to laugh, but he'll put on his serious face and back Patrick up instead.)

To break curfew and get lectured, read Nietzsche and want to discuss it over dinner, crash the car into the mailbox when she's learning how to drive, shake the house with the music blasting from her speakers. To utterly annihilate the boys (or girls) (or both) with the combination of the Stump mouth and the Wentz eyes. To make Pete cry a bit when she heads off for college. To hurt them, sometimes; and she will be able to hurt them, because they love her. 

Pete leans back against the mural on the wall, gazing at his daughter, and hopes to hell she'll love him back.

Not that he deserves it, or anything. But. 

He hopes she does anyway.

-

Patrick emerges from the bathroom, dabbing formula off his shirt with a wet washcloth and looking slightly grumpy about it. Pete sticks out his tongue at him. Nicole looks back and forth, from one dad to the other, and then pokes out her own little pink kitten tongue at Patrick in mimicry. 

Patrick's eyebrows shoot up, and Pete sniggers until he gets tackled (very gently) around the waist; he and Patrick both automatically tighten their arms securely around the baby as the three of them collapse in an awkward, milky-smelling pile of family on the couch.

"Just look at your precocious self!" he tells Nicole fondly. "You should stick out your tongue at Patrick always, honey, yes you should."

"Wentz, are you already corrupting my baby?" comes Patrick's voice from somewhere underneath Pete's left elbow.

Pete bumps his nose lightly against Nicole's, grinning like an idiot. He can feel her long, dark eyelashes almost brushing his own cheeks. "Babybabybaby."

"The first time she flips somebody the bird because she saw _you_ do it, I'm divorcing your ass," says Patrick, wriggling out from under Pete. His shirt is still damp, his glasses are half off his nose and his hat's all disheveled.

Pete stills just a fraction. "You do get that we'd have to actually be _married_ for that one."

"Exactly," says Patrick cryptically, and hums a little to himself. 

Nicole squirms around in Pete's arms and reaches out to tug at Patrick's hat. Patrick grins and closes his hands around her tiny ones, encompassing them entirely, as he starts in on another bluesy lullaby. 

Pete thinks, _I wonder how soon I can convince him to give her a sibling_ , and leans his head into the crook of Patrick's neck as baby curls back into his chest: little face pressed soft against his collar of thorns, little body a warm weight above his heart.

 

 

one day i’ll give birth to a tiny baby girl  
and when she’s born she’ll scream  
and i’ll tell her to never stop.

i will kiss her before i lay her down at night  
and will tell her a story so she knows  
how it is and how it must be for her to survive.


End file.
